THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE PRIEST

By Fr. M. Eugene Boylan, O.C.R.

INTRODUCTION

This book contains a collection of articles which were written for the American monthly The
Priest. Their style, structure, and general treatment were dictated by that circumstance. At first, it was
thought that a more fundamental treatment could be introduced when the articles were being printed in
book-form, but it was soon seen that a complete recasting of the whole would be necessary. So it was
decided to leave fundamentals for future treatment and to print the articles in their original form.

There are accordingly some notable omissions. For example, there is little or no reference to the
Holy Ghost, who should play so great a part in the life of the priest there is no attempt to examine a
priest’s obligation to seek perfection nor to indicate his hopes of reaching a high degree of prayer; the
treatment of humility is confined to one chapter, although we believe it to be the essential foundation of
all spiritual life and work. However, we hope that what is here may prove helpful to diocesan priests,
whose vocation we consider to be one of the most difficult of all.

Readers on this side of the Atlantic will please note that these pages were written with American
conditions in view, and that in accordance with the request of American editors, we have written freely
and unreservedly. Our intention is not to criticize but to be helpful and encouraging.

There are many shortcomings in what we have written, but we hope that those very
shortcomings will inspire more competent pens to give a fuller and more satisfactory work.

We would have liked to have further elaborated the fundamental place of the Mass in a priest’s
life, but the present format did not allow of it. May Mary the Mother of the Whole Christ use these pages
to bring us all closer to Her Son, our High Priest and Victim.

Mount St. Joseph Abbey,

Roscrea, Ireland.
2nd February, 1949.

CONTENTS
Introduction
I Have Called You Friends
Spiritual Reading
Talking with God
The Necessity for Mental Prayer
The Divine Office
The Office — The Prayer of Christ
The Mass — The Sacrifice of Christ
Victims with Christ
The Priest and Recreation
Mortification
Detachment
Celibacy
Self-Sacrifice
Lapsus Linguae
The Confessor
Humility
Our Daily Time-Table
Preaching
Studies
Union with Jesus
Behold Thy Mother
Consecration to Our Lady
Christ in Us
Christ is All and in All

“I HAVE CALLED YOU FRIENDS...

IT IS FAIRLY SAFE to say that we priests can all remember a time in our early days when we
made up our minds that we were going to be good men and good priests. We may, perhaps, when
forming that purpose, have stressed zeal in the ministry rather than personal holiness, but at least we
decided that our spiritual life would not be neglected; we resolved never to give up mental prayer or
spiritual reading, and we chose certain other practices to which we intended to be faithful. We were
going to preach the Gospel; yes — but we were going to be sincere about it, and to practice what we
preached. It is fairly safe, too, to say that few of us can look back on those good intentions without
realizing that things now are not quite what we intended or hoped they would be. Somehow — for one
reason or another — they did not work out just that way. A time came when we felt that the plans and the
habits formed in the seminary did not quite fit in with life in a parish. The things that used to move us
lost their appeal. The fervor that we anticipated in handling the Blessed Sacrament did not last. Hearing
confessions became weary work, and the thrill of giving absolution soon disappeared. Prayer — well, the
less said about that the better. We still have our office to “say”, and, thank God, we still “say” it; but
much of its significance has faded. We try to finish it quickly, so as to have time to say a few “real
prayers”, and even there, our old favorites have let us down; they no longer seem to have their former
meaning. Perhaps things have even gone further. Some of us may have decided that, after all, holiness is
not the main thing. There is plenty of work to be done in the parish, and the great thing is to do it;
holiness is not for men like us. So we come to a sort of a compromise with ourselves. Every time a book
or a remark seems likely to reproach us, we are quick to use our ministry as a lightning conductor to pass
the stroke to someone else; we immediately decide how perfectly that would apply to so-and-so, or how
useful it would be for such-and-such a sermon. We even build up some new chapters in theology to
justify our position — a really “practical” theology. We become adepts at finding some in the diocese
who do this, and others who do that — and we go and do likewise; combining in ourselves the “customs”
of the whole diocese in so far as suits our particular desires. After all, why should a man desire in any
way to vary from a kindly race of men? Is not custom the best interpreter of the law? And so on. Each of
us can fill in many chapters in the story for himself.
If we are honest with ourselves, we will feel that somewhere or other we made a mistake or took
a wrong turning, though perhaps we cannot tell exactly where. Perhaps we tried too much at the start;
perhaps we had a wrong notion of what God wanted from us; perhaps we were frightened at the thought
of the endless renunciation that faithful friendship with Him seemed to involve. Perhaps, indeed, we
misunderstood His handling of our case, and, just when He began to advance us in holiness by undoing
some of our work as a preliminary to substituting some of His own, we decided that we had better cut our
losses and be satisfied to be like the rest of men. Perhaps . . . well — there are many possibilities, and
there is no need to enumerate them all. Each one of us will have to diagnose his own case. With a view to
aiding him to treat it, we shall try to draw up what a medical student once called a “gunshot prescription”
— he did not know what was wrong with the patient, so he put in a little of everything to make sure of
hitting the mark. And so in this book we shall try to cover the main points of the spiritual life of the
priest, in a practical way. Each one, with the help of God, may thus find out whether anything is wrong in
his own case and decide what must be done to to put things right. But there are two things upon which we
must all be agreed. First, no matter how far or how badly things have gone wrong — even if we are
completely off the rails — God can put all right, and, what is more, He is ready to do so. He is our
Savior, and it is precisely because we are men — sinful men — who have gone astray, that we have a
claim upon His help as our Savior. He is God; therefore there is no limit to His power or to His mercy in
helping us; He can even turn our failings to good account. On this first point we must be certain. For if
we do not trust God as our Savior, we shall not have the courage to be honest with ourselves and to admit
our failings and infirmities. Each of us has to learn to imitate St. Paul and glory in his infirmities
precisely in order that the power of Christ may dwell in him. Secondly, we must agree to take Our Lord
at His word. He said that His yoke is easy and His burden light. If we let our imagination frighten us with
pictures of the impossible demands of penance and self-abnegation that His friendship is going to make
upon us, can we really say that we believe what He said? Actually, when He does ask us to give up
something, it is only in order that He may give us something else instead, which is a hundred times
better. We have His word for that, too, and surely we can take God at His word!
Having agreed upon these two points, let us now consider the practical aspect of the spiritual
life. On this point we may not agree. Many consider that a practical discussion of a priest’s life should
give a detailed program for the day and a direct solution of all its difficulties. Some program is necessary,
indeed, but perhaps there is a better way of leading up to it which, in the long run, is more practical.
Nearly all programs, sooner or later, have to yield to circumstances. They are either too rigid, and they
break under the strain, or else they are too elastic, and they stretch and yield — ad infinitum. For a priest,
who has to lead a full spiritual life under the most varying circumstances, it would seem that the more
practical and the more effective thing would be to form an attitude, rather than a program. If that attitude
is correct and sincere, and has its roots in a man’s heart and in his convictions, he should not have over-
much difficulty in planning his own spiritual life with the help of a competent adviser, and in adapting
his plan, without destroying it, to each set of circumstances. At any rate we can see how far we can get by
working on those lines. What, then, must be the attitude of the priest? The best answer is that indicated
by Our Lord to His Apostles at the Last Supper. He laid down the cardinal principle of the spiritual life
and the foundation of all spiritual fruitfulness, when He said: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the
Vine: you are the branches: he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit, for without
Me you can do nothing,” (John XV, 45). That one phrase of Our Lord’s: “Abide in Me,” sums up
everything, and it will re-echo frequently in these pages. But before we examine its full implication, let
us consider a special aspect of the relationship of the priest to Our Lord which is shown in the same
discourse when Our Lord said: “I will not now call you servants . . . but I have called you friends,” (John
XV, 15).
Here is the first answer to our question. The priest must be the friend of Jesus. He is more than a
mere servant, and so he must offer Jesus something more than mere service — for He wants more than
that. This is a point we need to realize: no matter what may be our success in the harvest-field, no matter
how much fruit we have gathered for Him, He will not be content with that alone. In fact, He has no need
of our services. He has many other instruments that He could use for His work if He so wished. But
although He appoints priests for the good of souls, His choice of you and me to be priests arises from His
desire to make us His friends for all eternity. For that reason alone He has done us the honor of choosing
us to work in partnership with Him. Consequently, no matter what fruit we gather for Him — and be it
noted in passing, there is a great difference between gathering fruit and bringing forth fruit — if we do
not give Him our friendship, we fail Him, we let Him down.
 Let us now go back to St. John’s Gospel and read the words of Jesus with a new accent: “I have
chosen you: and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit
should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you,” (John
XV, 16). In other words, Reverend Father, Our Lord has chosen you to do something which He could do
ever so much better Himself — per se vel per alium — because He wants you to have the benefit of it,
and because He wants you for His special friend. Perhaps that may throw some light on the inadequacy of
our spiritual outlook and practice. The Imitation of Christ gives utterance to Our Lord’s sentiments:
“Whatsoever thou givest besides thyself, I regard not; for I seek not thy gift, but thyself. As it would not
suffice thee, if thou hadst all things but Me; so neither can it please Me whatsoever thou givest, as long as
thou offerest not thyself” (Book iv, c. 8). No one else can give Him our friendship or our love. It is the
one thing in our lives that is irreplaceable; all the rest could be done by somebody else. Our first step then
towards forming a correct attitude is to remember that Jesus made each of us a priest because He wants
each of us for a friend. Pius X in his Letter to Priests quotes the text, “I have called you friends,” and
adds: “We priests, Christ’s representatives, must bear Him in ourselves; and as His ambassadors, where
He wills, there we must be. Since the sure and only sign of true friendship is to will the same thing —
idem velle, idem nolle; we must let that mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus, ‘holy, innocent, and
undefiled.’ As His ambassadors then, we must win men to belief in His law and teaching by first
observing them ourselves, for it behooves us, who, as sharing His power, lift up men from the bondage of
sin, to strive with all possible care not to be ourselves ensnared.” (Pius X: Haerent Animo, Aug. 4th,
1908). This particular Encyclical is full of very helpful passages and we earnestly beg all our readers to
study it. For the moment we take from it three points: first, that a priest is the friend of Jesus whom he
must bear in himself; secondly, that a priest shares in the power of Jesus; and thirdly — let us sum it up
in the pregnant phrases — “idem velle, idem nolle.”
These three points will suffice for the moment. There is little use in considering the usual
reasons upon which our need of holiness is based. We have heard them so often that they have either
taken their effect by now, or else we have become well inoculated against them. But there is one thing we
should all remember. It is very easy for us to be mistaken about our part in the fruitfulness of our
ministry. Every single step that any soul takes towards God is primarily and essentially the work of grace,
and the person who brings down that grace is the person who gets most merit for the advance of the soul.
It is true that we priests are ex officio ministers of grace; that is, we can always call upon the results of
someone else’s “prayer and fasting.” Our Lord and His Mother have done their share — it is more than a
share — in obtaining every single grace we minister; but there are others, too, who “fill up what is
wanting of the sufferings of Christ for His Church.” It is these “others” — this “someone” — who will
get most of the credit for our ministry unless we too become power houses of grace instead of mere
transmission lines. Our Lord warned us, “unless you abide in Me...” No long consideration, then, should
be necessary to see that we have to build up a living image of Jesus Christ in our minds, and to keep that
image fresh and effective in our lives. To that we must join a conviction of our complete dependence
upon Him in every action of our priesthood, and we must develop a generous desire to return His
friendship. The first step to this end lies in the daily use of three things which are very closely connected,
reading, reflection, and private prayer.
These three we shall examine briefly in the following chapters, leaving their fuller treatment for
a later stage. But before we go any further, let us rid ourselves of all vain fears. God will not ask us for
anything unreasonable. He knows the clay we are made of, and He knows just what we have made of
ourselves. We must always remember that He never asks us to do anything for Him without, at the same
time, coming to be our partner in doing it; for He is our full Supplement and our perfect Complement in
all things. It does not matter what we are; He can sanctify us, if we are but willing. Even as simple
Christians we have Him dwelling in our souls to sanctify us; but as priests, we are sharers in His
sanctifying power for our own sanctification as well as for that of others. Since we are bound to sanctify
ourselves as priests, we can count upon Him for all the graces and help necessary even for the heights of
holiness. Even if we feel we are hardened sinners, we must not forget that “This man receiveth sinners.”
That was His characteristic in the eyes of the Jews. Let us have no doubt about it; He will certainly
receive you and me.

SPIRITUAL READING
 SINCE OUR LIVES as Christians and our fruitfulness as priests have their root in our abiding in
Christ, our first aim must be to provide for the maintenance and the growth of that union. The
Sacraments, of course, have their part to play in the process, but first let us consider those three important
exercises previously mentioned, which we must perform in order to promote this growth: reading,
reflection and prayer. In the time table of every seminary and religious house, there is a place for an
exercise called meditation or mental prayer. This exercise is generally assumed to consist in the
methodical consideration of a previously prepared subject, which has been divided up into “points”; and
in this way one is led to the production of a number of acts or “affections,” often called a colloquy, as
well as to the formation of some practical resolution for one’s conduct. The principle underlying the
exercise is, from the practical point of view, one of the most important in the whole spiritual life. It
amounts roughly to this, that a man must daily think of God and of his own relations with Him, and that
he must also daily talk to God, both of God and of himself, and of their relations with one another. The
manner in which this principle is realized is capable of much variation and, to our mind, should be freely
adapted to suit individual needs if the practice is to be kept up during one’s life as a priest. There is no
need to discuss here the details of the methods usually proposed for meditation. There are many books on
the subject, and most priests have a fair practical experience of the exercise. Some have found a method
which works quite well and is a great help to them, but many of us have found that the whole thing has
become wearisome and apparently futile, and have given it up as a useless burden. The possible reasons
for that failure are manifold, and in the hope of helping people who have got into that position we have
endeavored elsewhere to suggest some ideas on the subject. As we can only treat the subject briefly here,
we hope we shall be pardoned for referring the reader to that book for a fuller treatment of the question,
(cf. Boylan: Difficulties in Mental Prayer.)
It would seem that three different things have been telescoped into this one exercise of
“meditation”; reading, reflection, and true prayer. Each of these has an important place in the spiritual
life, and we propose to examine each one, and then to make provision for them all in two set exercises,
namely, spiritual reading, and private prayer, with a third informal practice: reflection. One reason why
so many fail at mental prayer is that they are trying to make a fire without fuel — they have given up
regular spiritual reading. Apart from the Sacraments, such reading, in its own way, is the first essential of
a priest’s spiritual life.
There is no use in arguing about it. You are going to be asked to give an hour daily to the
combination of these three exercises, no matter how busy you are. No man is too busy to eat. Neither is
any man too busy to feed his soul. And if we Starve our souls, we shall deprive our ministry — busy
though it be — of its fruitfulness. In defense of this demand, we promise you that we shall cheerfully take
full responsibility at the Judgment Seat of God for any loss to souls, or to your work as a priest, that
might be occasioned by devoting an hour daily to these exercises, even though your attempts seem to be
fruitless as far as devotion is concerned. There are two purposes in spiritual reading. One is to educate
ourselves about God — especially about God Incarnate — and about the spiritual life. The other is to
keep our ideas of God and of the spiritual life fresh in our minds and to make them influence our actions.
In regard to the first, we must make ourselves well acquainted with the Person of Our Lord, with His
history and His habits, His views and His tastes; for we are to live as His friends. The Gospels and some
of the various lives of Our Lord (e.g. that by Archbishop Goodier), must be often in our hands, not to
acquire a mere academic knowledge or to obtain matter for our sermons — that must never be the
primary object of our spiritual reading or of our meditation — but in order to make us live as the friends
of Jesus. Since we are to share in His power, we should build up a good knowledge of grace and its
working, and of our place in the Mystical Body of Christ; and become, in addition, well acquainted with
the principles of the spiritual life, especially in regard to the life of prayer. If we do not become men with
an interior life, we cannot abide in the Vine and we shall not bring forth much fruit.
As to what books to read: that is a personal matter. In building up a picture of Our Lord, each
will have to follow his own taste in books. In regard to the spiritual life, however, we venture to make a
few tentative suggestions. As we are not familiar with the many excellent works published in the United
States, we have to confine our titles to those which we ourselves have read.
The Spiritual Life by Tanquerey should be on the shelves of every priest as an incomparable
book of reference. Despite its length, every priest should read it through at least once. But to commence
one’s study of the spiritual life we would suggest Spiritual Instruction by Abbot Blosius. Although we do
not like to cry the wares of our own Order, we cannot help drawing attention to The Soul of the
Apostolate by Dom Chautard, O.C.R., as a book which every priest should read. The works of Fr.
Kearney, C.S.Sp., have also been found most helpful, and of them we suggest My Spiritual Exercises as a
very practical guide. There are two excellent works on prayer: The Degrees of the Spiritual Life by
Canon Saudreau, and The Ways of Mental Prayer by Dom Lehodey, O.C.R. Those who are beset by
aridity at prayer will find much help in On Prayer by De Caussade, S.J., and The Science of Prayer by
De Besse, O.F.M. Cap. There are few books better than Acquired Contemplation by Fr. Gabriel of St.
Mary Magdalen O.D.C.: it appears in a volume under the title: St. John of the Cross — Doctor of
Contemplation and Divine Love. This gives in a short form an account of “post-meditation”
developments, and discusses what the ordinary soul may hope to achieve with good-will.
For an insight into the Mass, it is hard to improve on Dom Vonier, O.S.B., A Key to the Doctrine
of the Eucharist. A little book by De Jaegher, S.J., One With Jesus, is an invaluable account of the
indwelling of God in our souls. Finally, we insist that a priest’s reading must include some literature on
Our Lady. If we might select one of a number of excellent books, it would be The Mother of Divine
Grace by Le Rohellec, C.S.Sp. Those who wish to make devotion to Our Lady the foundation of their
spiritual life should read The De Montfort Way. These are but a few suggestions; other titles will be given
in the context of these articles. Once the initial work of our education has been done, our further aim in
spiritual reading should be rather to recall than to acquire knowledge, to deepen what we already know,
to form convictions that will influence our life, and so to ensure that the motives by which we live and
act are super-natural. In fact, our reading is going to be a sort of informal meditation in the strict sense of
the name, and those meditation books which carry a personal appeal are the very thing that can be
recommended for such reading. But whatever our book may be, we should read it somewhat in the same
way as one would read an insurance policy or a contract, or a catalogue or a specification for a new car
— that is, with careful consideration.
Reading of this type should be commenced with a short but very sincere prayer. It is hard to
improve on: “Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth,” and having commenced thus, we should try to read with
a spirit of faith. We have to be ready to hear the voice of God speaking to us — not to our congregation
or to the “other fellow” — between the lines, and we must be prepared to stop and listen to Him, to think
over what He has said, and to give Him what He requests. This is where the fault in our meditation lies:
we do not want to be asked for certain things, and that is often the reason why we hurry on, or why our
conversations with God run dry. We do not want to listen because of the possibility of unwelcome
demands being made upon our friendship; then He decides to refrain from proposing to us something
whose refusal would only increase the gap between us and Him; and so there is an awkward silence or a
sudden rush of activity. This, of course, is more likely to happen in prayer, but it can happen even in
reading. It is but one of the many possible examples of the inter-dependence of the different parts and
exercises of the spiritual life. Progress in any one leads to progress in all, and defects in one can interfere
with many others. In reading, this willingness to hear God speaking is of capital importance. We should
try to do our reading in His presence, just as a child plays in the “presence” of its mother sitting in the
background. But this means a fairly clear conscience and the absence of a deliberate determination to
keep something back from God. Such a determination is not to be confused with the feeling of difficulty
or distaste we may experience towards certain things He might want. He is not offended by that; all He
wants is that we should ask Him to give us grace to be generous in overcoming that difficulty. In this, as
in everything, He is always our Savior.
Another source of difficulty in spiritual reading is the style in which many books are written.
Quite a number of the best books on the spiritual life are translations from a foreign language, which
carry with them an air of affected piety that seems somewhat artificial. When to the difference of
language of origin there is added the difference of time in origin, the effect of unreality may be increased.
Social conventions differ considerably in various nations and generations, and both outward deportment
and literary expressions are, to a certain extent, matters of convention. What many writers on the
European continent — especially those of an earlier century — would consider to be the normal
expression of Christian charity, may seem to English-speaking people of today to be, if not hypocrisy, at
least exaggerated affectation. This is but an example; there are many other external things that belong to
their time and place of origin, and without considering them in detail we can admit that a certain reserve
must be used about accepting what one reads. Not everything that is written applies to each individual
case. There are even different schools of spirituality, and the reader will have to set aside what does not
fit in with the present stage of his own spiritual development. Each stage has its particular needs and its
particular limitations, and until a fire is burning well, one must be careful not to kill it by putting on too
much fuel. Prudence is always essential. Books alone, therefore, are not quite sufficient; one needs an
occasional talk with a wise and understanding counselor, but that point must be left for later discussion.
One thing is very desirable. When reading does start a suitable train of thought, it is good to
follow it up — putting down one’s book, or even, say, going for a walk, if that is helpful. This is the
informal reflection of which we spoke, and which we recommend as a habit that every priest should try to
develop. The point to note is that such reflection should be referred to God’s relationship with one’s own
self — not with one’s parishioners or penitents; and be it noted, too, that we do not include under this
type of reflection, “apologetic” thinking — that is, thinking out arguments for converts, etc. Such thought
is necessary, but it does not supply for the omission of true “meditation” as a source of one’s own
spiritual life. One other point! If our reflection leads us to conclusions that seem particularly unpleasant
or that make great demands on our courage, it would be well to postpone the application of such
conclusions where there is room for reasonable doubt, and keep an open mind, until one has had an
opportunity to talk the thing over with a “wise man.” This may seem strange advice, as it may leave room
for temporary self-deception. Its purpose, however, is to avoid the danger of saying “no” to God as a
result of some exaggerated or mistaken idea of what He asks of us and so spoiling our intimate friendship
with Him. The devil often tries to destroy our good will by exaggerating our notions of what we may
have to do. It is important to be reasonable even with oneself and to remember that individual needs must
be considered; otherwise, one develops a habit of evasion and does not look facts in the face.
This informal reflection can easily be changed into informal prayer by talking things over with
Our Lord instead of with oneself. It can arise directly out of one’s reading, and one should encourage
such a development if it commences, for we must never forget that God is in the soul of every man in the
state of grace, waiting for his friendship and companionship. In this connection it is important to realize
that such prayer can be quite informal and conversational. It is true that God has a claim to our reverence
and adoration, but that we give Him by the Mass and by the Office. At the moment He wants to be
treated as our Father and our Friend. Ultimately we must treat Him as our Lover; and as St. Bernard says
“Love knows nothing of reverence.” There is much more that could be said on reading and reflection, but
as we want to show their effect upon mental prayer, we shall pass on to that subject in our next chapter.
The essential thing is to read regularly; even ten minutes daily would be better than a few hours once a
week. Reading can be an act of religion, and we know what value that can have; moreover, it makes
mental prayer much easier, and enables us to do without those involved methods that many of us find so
wearisome. If a priest wants to bear fruit, let him abide in Christ. If he wants to abide in Christ, let him
seek Christ daily in his reading. That search will make it easier to find Him also in the Sacraments, in
prayer, in humility, in one’s neighbor and in doing the will of God.

TALKING WITH GOD

THE MORE A MAN reads and reflects, the more he can know about God; but all his reading
and reflection notwithstanding, he will never know God Himself nor will he grow in that friendship
which our Lord proposed to His priests, unless he converse with God frequently in prayer. This particular
exercise of the spiritual life devoted to conversation with God is usually called either “mental prayer” or
“meditation.” These names are sanctioned by usage and authority — for Canon Law requires priests to
devote themselves daily to “mental prayer” — and it is not easy to find an alternative name which would
be an improvement. Yet both of these names have led to much misunderstanding, and caused unnecessary
difficulty at prayer. The term “mental” prayer is taken by some to imply complete distinction from
“vocal” prayer, and they decide therefore that words should never be used in its exercise; this is a capital
error. In practice, vocal prayer indicates that form of prayer in which one makes use of set formulae of
words, endeavoring, at the same time, with more or less success, to conform one’s mind to their meaning.
But if the mind and heart are not in some way at work, there is no true prayer at all. The Divine Office is
an example of vocal prayer; so also is the recitation of the Memorare. By mental prayer we here
understand that form of prayer in which one endeavors to originate the thought in one’s own mind, and so
to get the will to move in some way towards God. In practice, it makes no difference to the existence of
“mental” prayer whether this interior action manifests itself in external words or not; if the prayer
originates interiorly, it is for practical purposes mental prayer. In vocal prayer, we say something given to
us from outside and we endeavor to “mean” what we say. In mental prayer we first endeavor to “mean”
something; whether we then say it in a standard formula or in our own words — whether in fact we say it
in words at all or not — does not matter. In short, mental prayer means talking to God “in one’s own
words” though one may use no words at all! The paradox arises from the fact that even between human
friends who know one another very well, smiles and gestures can speak volumes; they are very much
one’s “own words.” But when there is question of our Divine Friend, to Whom our very thoughts are
open, our minds and hearts can speak directly; their acts are “our own words” in this case. When words
are used in mental prayer, it is to help us to form acts rather than to convey our acts to God. Mental
prayer, in practice, then, does not exclude the use of words, but it can dispense with them when expedient
to do so.
The term “meditation” may mislead even more than the expression “mental prayer.” Not
everyone can start talking to God in his own words from the first moment of his prayer. Most of us have
to think of something to say to Him, and while this thinking is quite properly called meditation, yet, as
such, it is not prayer. It is true, however, that while thus “meditating” one’s heart may be making silent
and unperceived acts of love of God which might be called prayer; then the real mental prayer consists in
those acts, and the “meditation” is only a preparation or a prelude to prayer — a means to an end. It is
essential to realize this point; for there are many who consider reflection to be the important thing at
mental prayer, and the “acts” or “affections” merely an accidental, or at most, an integral part of it. The
contrary is rather the case: the acts are the real prayer and all the rest purely the means to an end. It is
true that there are other fruits to be gathered from the exercise as it is generally described, but as we
pointed out in the previous chapter, provision for these is made by spiritual reading and reflection at
some other time of the day. For the moment we want to pray.
The need for consideration at prayer in order to produce such acts varies with the individual and
with one’s progress. In this connection, there is a generally recognized division of mental prayer into
three classes: discursive prayer, affective prayer, and simplified prayer. These three classes are often
considered to be characteristic of the three “ways” or stages of the spiritual life: the purgative, the
illuminative, and the unitive way respectively. Yet the parallel between a way of prayer and a particular
stage of the spiritual life, must not be taken too literally. The three “ways” of praying can be found at any
stage of the spiritual life, and possibly even in the one prayer; they are not sharply divided or mutually
exclusive. When considerations predominate at the time of prayer, we have discursive prayer. This prayer
too, is sometimes called “meditation,” thus adding to the confusion occasioned by that unfortunate word.
It is a prayer in which one helps oneself to produce “acts” by the “discourse” of reason, that is by
consideration of some particular point. The name is generally confined to that prayer in which such
consideration predominates; the acts are few and take up but little time. If, however, the acts come fairly
freely and often, so that there is no need for much consideration at the time of prayer, and if these acts or
“affections” tend to predominate, we have “affective prayer.” This is really praying in one’s own words,
just as many Catholics do after Holy Communion. At a later stage, as one’s friendship with Our Lord
deepens, conversation with Him becomes much simpler in expression. Few words then are necessary; one
may be often repeated, often our love or our adoration is quite silent. Sometimes one does no more than
kneel before God, sinful and sorrowful. Prayer of this type may be called simplified prayer; it is
sometimes called the “prayer of simplicity,” but as some authors use this expression to indicate a special
type of infused prayer (to which it is somewhat akin), we prefer to avoid the term.
However, one usually has to begin with discursive prayer, and here the question of method
immediately arises. To cut a long discussion short, let us say that each one should use just as much or just
as little method as he finds helpful. There are books and books of “methodized” prayer, which are of
great help to some, but to others only a hindrance, for prayer is an individual thing, and methods purely
means towards an end. All we have to say about the choice is, that if one must err, err on the side of
simplicity. We go to prayer to pray — to talk to God. The first step then is to make contact with Him.
True, He is always there, but we must advert to His presence, which in practice rather means adverting to
His advertence to our presence. This needs deliberate effort; it involves a definite decision to turn to Him,
and a definite breaking of all other “contacts.” Our ultimate success at prayer depends greatly upon this
whole-hearted turning to God at the beginning of our prayer. Our first instinct should be to adore Him.
Let us do this in the simplest possible words — words that we have made our own; no fine speeches, no
rhetoric or oratory, no striving after effect! “You are my God and I adore You.” If we mean that, it may
be enough, for sincerity and simplicity must be the keynotes of our conversation with God. If we wish to
add more — well and good, as long as we mean it. We are now praying; whether we vary our words, or
keep saying the same ones, we are still praying. The next step depends on ourselves. We may want to tell
God we love Him, or we may feel the need of telling Him how sorry we are for having offended Him. Let
us do as we are urged, simply, sincerely, and slowly. No counting of words or acts! No attempt to rush
things, to get in a lot of aspirations! Shakespeare puts the principle perfectly: “Use all gently!” As long as
we can say anything about these sentiments or “mean” anything about them, we are praying, and there is
no need to proceed further until that prayer ceases. This is true mental prayer.
But unfortunately it comes to an end — sooner or later. It is possible, indeed, that it may not
start at all. In either case we have to fall back on “discourse” — or consideration, to help us to pray. For
this we need some subject, the choice of which is, again, a personal matter, and we can only offer
suggestions. A good book of meditations, Hamon’s for example, or To the Priesthood with Jesus, would
supply us with material. The Gospel of the Mass of the day, some part or chapter in our spiritual reading,
the mysteries of the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, are all valuable sources of matter for prayer. A
series of subjects like the Stations is often of great help, or again one can note certain passages in one’s
daily reading and come back to them for prayer next day. Having selected our subject we must start to
consider some particular aspect of it — “the first point.” Here one notes the probable need for some
previous preparation. Linking up prayer with spiritual reading helps to avoid multiplying books and one
could use a meditation book for part of one’s spiritual reading. But the man who is faithful to his daily
reading has removed half the difficulties in the approach to mental prayer. Meditation books generally
divide the subject into a number of points and suggest the line of thought to be followed, the conclusions
to be drawn, and the acts and resolutions that are to result from it. We can adopt this plan in so far as it is
helpful. Some minds will be satisfied with deciding upon their subject; noting a few points for
consideration and mobilizing some general material to assist the consideration. Experience will naturally
help us to decide what way suits us best, but we should so arrange our choice that the incidents of Our
Lord’s Life and Death are frequent subjects of our prayer.
To return now to our prayer! When the preliminary acts are finished, we have to reflect upon our
subject. It is here that the faithful practice of daily reading and informal reflection will help very much to
lessen what is one of the most wearisome tasks of the spiritual life. For if we read frequently, we should
not need to think long before acts form themselves. Our personal view is that once these acts come,
consideration can be left aside till it is needed again to revive our conversation with God. Reflection is
usually done more or less by talking to ourselves about our own subject. It is a very good plan to change
this, and to make our consideration by talking to Our Lord about the matter. To facilitate this we would
suggest that one adds to the opening acts of the prayer a very short spiritual communion, inviting our
Lord to come into one’s soul. Now it is very desirable that we receive Him in that mystery which is the
subject of our prayer, and there need be nothing artificial about this. The mysteries of Our Lord’s life
have a quasi-eternal existence of their own, and they belong, in a sense, to all the members of His
Mystical Body. The unity of that Body, in which we and He are one, defies space and time: we here and
now, in the twentieth century, in whatever part of the world we live can be quite really one with our Lord
in any incident of His life in Palestine during the beginning of the first century of the Christian era.
If, then, the subject of our prayer is some such incident, let us stand beside Him in that incident
and talk to Him about it, and about ourselves. Suppose it is the scene where He weeps over Jerusalem.
Let us ask him gently: “Am I also one of those for whom You weep? Have I forgotten the things that are
to my peace? Does my eagerness for success, for comfort, for a good time, hurt Your Heart? Am I
perhaps one of those who refuse to be gathered under Your wings? Am I as full of myself as all that?”
And so on.
If our subject be something more abstract as, for example, trust — then let us talk to Him about
it. “Did you have me in mind when You said to the Apostles: ‘O you of little faith, why do you doubt?’
— Do I trust You enough? Am I perhaps putting all my trust in myself? That sermon I preached on
Sunday — it seemed quite a good piece of work, but now it strikes me that perhaps You are hurt because
I gave You such a small part in it. Did You really mean me to take St. Paul at his word — and literally
glory in my infirmities? Because if You did — well, I’m afraid I’m letting You down very badly — I
rather glory in the power I have to do good in Your service, and I can’t say that my motives are what they
should be.” Now, conversation is impossible if one person keeps talking all the time, so we must pause to
see whether He has perhaps something to say to us. In the last example given above, we may possibly
hear a gentle inquiry — “Is it really in My service that you are working — or is it for your own glory?
Did you ever think of the price I had to pay in suffering — and My Mother, too — to obtain for you the
grace of your priesthood? Where did your natural power to preach come from?” If we are willing to
listen, we shall hear Him speak, especially if we are also willing to heed His gentle reproaches.
Resolutions then form themselves almost automatically. However, if Our Lord does not move us
in some particular way, we ourselves should be ready to take the initiative and form some specific
resolution that is practical and sincere. This type of prayer is half way between Discursive Prayer and
Affective Prayer. It presupposes fidelity to daily reading, and also a good will with a fairly clear
conscience. In other words, it means that, although we are sinners, we are not so obstinate that we will
refuse to give up a particular sin when God brings it to our notice. If, however, there is somewhere in the
borderland of our consciousness a determination to persist in some path of error that we really know is
opposed to God’s will, then our prayer will not be so easy. From the very start there will be constraint.
All the time, there will be determination to avoid letting our thoughts run on “dangerous” lines, and if
conversation with Our Lord does commence, we will be careful to steer it clear of “dangerous” topics. In
other words we will not be sincere; we will be afraid to look God in the face, afraid to catch His eye.
That is one reason why there is so much difficulty in mental prayer. We find it hard to start talking to
God, because we are afraid that He will ask us to do something that we are determined not to do.
Ultimately that means that all hope of conversation with God has to be abandoned. That means also that
there can be no question of true friendship with Our Lord, and here we come upon the very close
connection between mental prayer and the spiritual life in general. This connection is our justification for
devoting so much space to the topic. To get mental prayer right, the rest of the spiritual life must be put
right, so that apart from its own intrinsic importance, mental prayer is a valuable clinical thermometer for
the health of our soul.
Failure in prayer is often due to failure in one of the four “purifies” which are necessary for
familiar friendship with Jesus. These are: purity of conscience, purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of
action. We shall have to examine these four points in the course of our discussions, but here it is only
necessary to advert to the general effect on our prayer and our relation with God of habits of sin, of
strong and inordinate attachments, of pre-occupation with thoughts of the things of this world, and of
serious failure to make our deeds correspond to our principles and ideals. Friendship with God must be
sincere. He is always our Savior, and He will always receive and save sinners, provided they are willing
to become His friends. But friendship has its obligations and demands a certain sincerity with God and
with oneself. Leaving this point for further notice, we may point out that there are other causes which
may interfere with our prayers. A determination to persist in methodical consideration when one really
wants to “pray” — i.e. to make acts — will lead to failure. Difficulty also arises if one is not content with
simple acts, repeated if necessary, or if one refuses to be content with silent prayer when that is possible.
Trying to force oneself to make numerous or complicated acts will mean trouble. The opposite mistakes
are also common, for many dispense themselves from reflection at prayer too easily.
Then, too, a time of aridity comes to all of us when not even a good thought seems possible.
Here one must fall back on a grim, resolute decision never to give up devoting a fixed time to this
“fruitless” attempt at prayer every day. Merely staying on one’s knees and doing one’s best to avoid
being deliberately distracted is a prayer of great value in these circumstances, and we must be convinced
that there is no better use to which the time can be put. It is sometimes helpful to recite some favorite
prayer very slowly — the Anima Christi, or the Litany of the Blessed Mother — so that the words and
phrases become “our own,” but even this may fail. Then perhaps a book may help to keep our thoughts
on God. If we use a book, we should pause frequently to — well, to pray if we can, if not, to kneel before
God in faith and hope. But whatever happens we must be determined that we will not give up the daily
attempt. It will bring down many graces on our flock, and on our own souls.

THE NECESSITY FOR MENTAL PRAYER

EVEN AT THE risk of wearying the reader by our insistence and by partial repetition, we
cannot leave the subject of mental prayer without some further discussion. Perhaps it would be an
exaggeration to say that the whole spiritual life hinges upon mental prayer, but it is at least true that there
is no exercise which can have such an effect on the spiritual life and which is itself so affected by that
life. It therefore forms an excellent test of one’s spiritual progress. Hence our insistence. To sum up the
view already stated, we may say that there are three things which each priest must decide to do every
day. The first is to nourish his mind with thoughts about God by reading; the second is to develop and to
digest such thoughts by reflection; the third is to speak to God in his own words and his own way by
prayer, using those thoughts if necessary. These three exercises are often telescoped into one and called
meditation. We suggest separating them again into three different exercises, namely: spiritual reading,
“personal” prayer, and reflection, and conscientiously devoting an hour for all three taken together. The
allocation of that hour depends upon one’s personal needs and accomplishments, but twenty minutes
should be a minimum for prayer. The reflection can be done rather informally — on a walk for example
— but one must check up occasionally to see that it is done. Spiritual reading must have its appointed
time, and must never be discarded. The time set aside for prayer — we may call it mental prayer — must
also be fixed and must not be left to chance. The morning is often suggested as the most suitable time,
but not everybody will find it so. For some, the evening is more congenial, especially if one has a chance
of making one’s prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. If the evening is chosen, there are two points
which call for notice. The first is that it is much more likely that things will turn up to interfere with an
evening prayer than a morning one (and may we stress the fact that “evening” does not mean just before
going to bed!), so some rule must be made to provide for accidents. Two periods of prayer next day
might do that. The other point is, that when mental prayer is left until evening, some short informal
“contact” must be made with Our Lord in the morning before Mass.
The priest’s whole life is to be lived in close partnership with Our Lord — we are branches of
the Vine — and the remembrance of that contact needs to be renewed at the start of each day’s work. If a
priest fails to do this, he will find himself attacking most of the day’s work single-handed, a policy which
is fatal and sterile for him. A priest cannot perform a single act of his ministry alone! He is not merely
another Christ — he is one with Christ. That union must characterize his Mass, his office, his work — his
whole life as a priest. Nowhere can it be better developed and made real than in mental prayer and in
one’s thanksgiving. Consequently even a short five minutes praying, as distinct from saying prayers, will
make a great difference to the Mass and the breviary.
If proper provision is made for that morning meeting with our Divine Partner, there can be little
objection to choosing whatever time of the day suits best for our prayer. In the last chapter we gave an
example of how to start to pray, and we pointed out that facility in talking to Our Lord, or even in
remaining silent in His presence was partly dependent upon the state of our spiritual life. However, not
everyone will find it easy to pray as we suggested, and even fervent priests may find it extremely difficult
to converse with God for any length of time. For such as these, there are other ways of praying. The slow,
deliberate recital of a favorite prayer, with plenty of pauses, will help in some cases, and one should try
to make the words of the prayer one’s own by dwelling on them. The Psalms offer excellent material for
such a way of praying; though one should not linger over obscure or difficult texts, but should be content
with those verses which say something that one wants to say. Any formula of prayer in a book can be
used in this way. One such book is The Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Fr. Thomas of Jesus,
O.S.A. It is a translation of an old Portuguese work in which every second chapter is a prayer personally
addressed to Our Lord. We hope to see this book reprinted shortly and distributed through the Mercier
Press. Another way of dealing with this difficulty is to use a spiritual book line by line to supply one with
ideas, and then to form one’s own acts as a result of the few lines just read. Care must be taken, however,
that this exercise does not develop into mere reading. The book used should be one which lends itself to
such treatment, preferably an old friend, for if one has not read it before, the tendency will be to run on
rapidly to see what comes next. Some books are written deliberately to carry one on; others have the
knack of making one stop and think. Each man has to choose his own fare in this matter.
Aridity and distraction beset many men in prayer. They may have many different causes, but
they always make the prayer burdensome, and soon the temptation arises to give up such “prayer” as
sheer waste of time and to devote the period to “more useful” purposes. This is the parting of the ways,
and the beginning of the end of the spiritual life — if one yields permanently to that temptation. One
must react promptly by a vigorous decision never to give up the daily attempt at prayer, no matter how
futile the whole thing may seem. Without seeking further justification for such a decision — and it would
not be hard to find many good reasons for it — one can throw full responsibility for the time thus
employed on the Canon Law of the Church, (cf. Canon 125). Because of that Canon we know that the
daily attempt to pray is God’s will. Now we cannot improve upon God’s plan or upon His way of doing
things, and if we do things His way, He takes full responsibility for the results. In any case, we cannot be
His friends if we refuse to carry out His will, and His will is in the Code. For a priest the time of mental
prayer is a daily appointment with God. If God decides not to come, that is His business; our business is
to keep the appointment and we shall not lose by faithfully doing so.
The causes of distraction and aridity at prayer are manifold. Distractions can arise from
inordinate attachments, excessive pre-occupation with one’s work, lack of sufficient remote preparation
for prayer by spiritual reading, want of a generous effort at the beginning of our prayer to turn our whole
attention to what we are going to do, and from many other such causes. If the cause is evident — well,
one cures a disease by removing the cause. However, the nature of the human mind is such that
distractions are almost inevitable; even the very interest of the subject of one’s prayer may produce
distractions according to the usual laws of the association of ideas. It is well, too, to remember that, as
one progresses in prayer, a period comes wherein God changes His way of co-operation with the soul: He
no longer acts on the intellect or the imagination, and thus these faculties run free and uncontrolled.
Therefore, there are distractions that one cannot remove. What, then, is to be done? Either make the
distraction a matter of prayer, or else just look over its shoulder as one does in a crowd when a stranger
gets in one’s line of sight. Leave the distractions there, but attend to God; the very difficulty of doing so
makes the prayer more meritorious. Much of our dissatisfaction with our attempts at prayer arises from
the fact that we are really trying to please ourselves instead of trying to please God.
This is also the reason why we are so discontented with arid prayer; it gives us no self-
satisfaction. Aridity can arise in different ways. Over-indulgence in pleasure — even in lawful pleasure
— worldliness, or sinful habits, can destroy our taste for the things of God. The sensual man perceiveth
not the things that are of the Spirit of God, (I Cor. ii, 14). Prayer is closely connected with the desire for
God, with the relish and “taste” for God, and here again we see the close connection between the whole
spiritual life and our prayer. However aridity does not always arise from infidelity, nor can it always be
ascribed to fatigue, though the latter cause is, of course, sometimes operative. But, as we noted above,
progress in prayer may lead to an arid state. To reach the Promised Land we must go out into the desert
and leave the flesh-pots of Egypt, even though “flesh-pots” in this case have been spiritual. For a fuller
treatment of this condition we would refer the reader to either of two books: The Science of Prayer by Fr.
de Besse, O.F.M. Cap., or On Prayer by Fr. de Caussade, S.J. Here we can only warn the reader not to
assume that such aridity is a sign of failure in prayer. It is often the reverse. In this case a man has
reached the stage where he can only pray in complete dryness by Patience and by faith, but whatever
happens, the attempt at prayer must not be given up. Each and every priest must convince himself that he
cannot relinquish this daily attempt at prayer without grave loss to himself and to the Church. Mental
prayer has many important aspects.
There is one, however, which is unique. Practically all the other exercises of the spiritual life can
be performed by a priest who still clings to his own pet plans for doing his own will, whether it be a habit
of deliberate venial sin, a refusal to listen to the promptings of grace, or a determination to refuse God
something which God wants him to give up. A man can blind his own conscience to the serious danger of
mortal sin — he may even go farther — and still carry out all his other religious exercises and duties. But
he cannot persist in any such infidelity and still persevere in the daily practice of mental prayer . One
thing or the other must give way. No man can look God in the face every day and say “No” to Him, and
no man who has not a deliberate intention of saying “No” to God, need be afraid to look Him in the face.
We may be weak and faint-hearted, but He is our Savior; He knows the clay of which we are made, and
the Scripture tells us our sufficiency is from God.
There is another point which should be made in this connection; we live in the world and to
some extent we share its ways; we live in a particular nation and we share its national character and
special outlook. To some extent we are all molded by our environment. No matter how excellent all these
influences may be, they have at least the defects of their merits. It is not for an Irish writer to analyze the
American outlook and temperament. But perhaps this much may be said without giving offence: all we
English-speaking peoples share a culture which has been molded to a very great extent by Protestantism
and which is now being greatly influenced by paganism. We priests have to stand between men and God;
we have to lead men to God, and we cannot help men to escape from the prison of their own time and
culture if we ourselves are in the same chains. To change the simile, we cannot guide men through the
fog that besets the path of our ship if we ourselves have not some means of knowing the true course,
either by experience, by wirelessed information, or by an occasional glimpse of the heavens.
If we do not daily make personal contact with our Lord, we shall easily become prisoners of our
own time and our own surroundings. To a priest, the world should be at best “provincial” for the priest’s
capital is elsewhere. If we do not sustain our supernatural outlook, we ourselves shall become as petty
and as provincial as the parish-pump. Daily prayer and reflective reading are our only hope. Pius X
devotes a great part of his Letter to Catholic Priests to the question of daily prayer and reflection. His
words must be quoted:
Let us hold it as a fundamental truth, that if a priest wishes to live up to the standard required
by his position and his calling, he must give himself with intense earnestness to prayer. It is much to be
deplored that prayer is too often made rather out of routine than with fervor of spirit, the psalms for the
appointed Hours are recited listlessly, a few invocations are added, and no other time is set apart daily
to commune with God with the piety which lifts the heart heavenward. . . .
It is of capital importance with regard to prayer that a certain time be set aside every day to
meditate on things eternal. No priest can omit this without being guilty of great carelessness — and
without grave loss to his soul. And in reference to the very danger we have just indicated, that of a priest
becoming infected with spirit of his surroundings, the Pope writes: A certain heavenly-mindedness befits
the priest, as being one who must himself know, speak of, and breathe unto others the love of heavenly
things.... That daily meditation helps more than anything else to produce and sustain this habit of mind,
this almost natural union with God, is so obvious to the thinking mind that we need insist no further upon
it. A sad proof of this necessity is found in the lives of those priests who despise and make light of this
practice. They are men in whom that priceless blessing — sensus Christi — has grown feeble; they give
themselves wholly to vain and earthly things, fulfilling their sacred obligations negligently, coldly, and
perhaps unworthily.
Even in our ministry we shall reap the reward of our daily reading, our reflection, and our
prayer. Therein lies the secret of that unction in preaching by which a man moves souls to come to God.
Therein, too, is found the source of those happy inspirations that put just the right words into a Priest’s
mouth when he is dealing with those in suffering or in sin. The words of Pope Pius X are to the point:
Among those who fail to consider in the heart, or who look upon mental prayer as a burden there are
some, who, though aware of the consequent spiritual atrophy, excuse themselves on the plea that it is
manifestly to the advantage of others that they should be wholly taken up with the distractions and cares
of the ministry. They make a sad mistake, for, not being accustomed to commune with God, when they
speak to others of Him or try to instruct them in Christianity, the Divine Spirit breathes not through them,
and the Gospel in their hands, seems almost without life. Their voice, however striking, prudent or
eloquent it may be, is not the voice of the Good Shepherd, to which the sheep hearken to their salvation;
it is but empty noise and passing vanity, often bearing fruit only in pernicious example, to the discredit of
religion and the scandal of the good. So also is it with the whole life of such a man; it produces no solid
fruit, at least only a short lived one, since there is lacking that heavenly shower which “the prayer of him
that humbleth himself” calls down in great abundance. These are not the words of any retreat preacher,
who might conceivably be led by zeal to overstate his case. They are the measured, solemn assertion of
the Vicar of Christ addressing all his priests. Their authority alone should be sufficient to assure every
priest of the value of his attempt at mental prayer, and to encourage him to spend time and trouble in its
development. Those who have neglected prayer will find that they come to God as would a stranger to
the managing director, carrying out the plans of one whom they have never met personally. Our Lord’s
desire is otherwise: you are My Friends . . . ! Let not the reader be impatient with our insistence on prayer
and friendship with God. We have quite a number of “dont’s” to urge at a later stage, but since we dread
negative spirituality, we do not want to empty a man’s life of any of its pleasure without being ready to
propose some better alternative. The personal friendship of Jesus can compensate for many sacrifices and
that personal friendship can grow only by contact in prayer. Let us never forget His promise to the
Apostles — that if they gave up certain joys of this world, they should have instead a hundredfold in this
life and eternal life hereafter. Mental prayer is the gate to that hundredfold.

THE DIVINE OFFICE

ONE COULD WRITE almost indefinitely on Mental Prayer and Spiritual Reading, but there is
another type of prayer which is of capital importance for the priest — the Divine Office. Here again,
instead of trying to provide detailed solutions of the difficulties encountered which, to be effective,
should be varied to meet the needs of each individual case — we intend rather to try to indicate an
attitude in which to approach the Divine Office, and to be content with making a few suggestions as to
details.
To our mind, the proper approach to the Divine Office, as to all the other points of the spiritual
life, is closely connected with a right appreciation of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ. We
hope to deal with that subject later; here we must refer to the prayer of the Whole Christ. St. Augustine
speaks of Christ as “one man who reaches to the ends of the earth”, (In Ps. 142); “There is but one man
who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry out are always His members”, (In Ps. 85). The
Mystical Christ, of Whom we are members, is conceived as extending throughout all space and all time.
The “Whole Christ,” to use St. Augustine’s words, — Head and members — may be regarded as one
Mystical Person, in the sense that while each member retains his own individuality and responsibility,
there is a mutual sharing of merits and de-merits, of prayers and of sufferings throughout the whole
Mystical Body. We can call the merits of Christ our own. He has taken upon Himself the shame and the
punishment of our sins; and there is a sort of communicatio idiomatum between the Head and the
members. The subject is too wide and too difficult to expound here, and we hope we shall be forgiven for
referring the reader to what we have written elsewhere. But we must insist that all Christianity consists
essentially in an “entering-in” to Christ, a “putting-on” of Christ, an identification with Christ, — an
abiding in Christ as the branch abides in the vine. Now this union is not a mere static thing; it is
something vital. Further, the Mystical Christ is four-dimensional in the sense that while in the human
three-dimensional person the actions of any member can be referred to the whole person as he exists in a
particular moment, the actions of Christ can be referred to, and “owned” by, a member at any time,
however distant from the days of Christ.
Now the Divine Office is an entering into the prayer of Christ; it is a putting-on of the prayer of
Christ; it is an identification with the prayer of Christ; it is an abiding in the Vine. Therefore, when the
priest opens his breviary, he “enters into” the prayer of Christ in a much more real way than a monk,
coming into choir where the office is being sung, “enters-in” to the prayer of the community. It is the
prayer of Christ that the priest is praying. Christ is praying in him; he is praying in Christ. He is praying
in the name of Christ and in the name of each of His members. In fact in a sense each of Christ’s
members is praying in the priest, and many of the sentiments expressed in the Psalms refer not to the
priest but to Christ Himself and to some of His members, whose prayer they express.
The Office then is not a personal prayer; it is pre-eminently a Christian prayer and a Catholic
prayer — it is the prayer of Christ. To quote St. Augustine: “We pray to Him in the form of God; He
prays in the form of the slave, i.e. ourselves. There He is the Creator; here He is in the creature. He
changes not, but takes the creature and transforms it into Himself, making us one man, Head and body,
with Himself. We pray therefore to Him, and through Him, and in Him; we pray with Him, and in Him;
we pray with Him and He with us; we recite this prayer of the Psalms in Him and He recites it in us”, (In
Ps. 85). And elsewhere St. Augustine writes: “Let Him rise up, this one chanter; let this man sing from
the heart of each of us, and let each one of us be in this man. When each of you sings a verse, it is still
this one man that sings, since you are all one in Christ. We do not say: ‘To Thee, O Lord, we have lifted
up our eyes,’ but ‘To Thee have I lifted up my eyes’, (Ps. 122: 1). You should of course, consider that
each of you is speaking but that primarily this one man is speaking Who reaches to the ends of the earth”,
(In Ps. 142). Here is the secret of the proper recitation of the Office. It is not so much a question of
understanding the words that are to be said, as of appreciating the One Who is saying them. It is not so
much a matter of stirring up one’s own personal devotion, but rather of “putting-on” the devotion of Him
in Whose name the prayer is said. In the unity of Christ, there is no distinction of “his” and “mine.” All
His is mine! And it is His prayer that I am to say from my breviary, for I am a branch of the Vine that is
Christ. The importance of this way of viewing the Divine Office can hardly be exaggerated. Once it is
properly understood and appreciated, there can be no more room for the usual criticism of the duty of
saying the Office: that the text is too obscure to be understood, that the language is unfamiliar, that there
is no help or scope for private devotion, that the office is out-of-date and out of harmony with the spirit
and the needs of the times, etc., etc. Even if these objections were true — which we do not admit — they
do not upset the paramount claim of the Divine Office to be par excellence the prayer of the priest. There
is but one Priest — Christ Himself; we are but participators in His priesthood. So too, there is one great
Prayer of that Priest; and, after the Mass, there is no other way in which we can make that Prayer so
much our own, as in the Divine Office. It is true that the words of the Office do not always apply to our
own personal dispositions or circumstances; they may even seem inapplicable to the mood of the
moment. But they are intended to have a much wider application than that. They apply to some member
of the Mystical Body of Christ in Whose name we are praying. We praise God on behalf of all creation;
we thank Him, we beg His grace and mercy, not merely for ourselves, but for all mankind — in a word,
for the Body of Christ. We must always remember, too, that the Psalms and Canticles which form such a
large part of the Office, are the work of the Holy Spirit, Who is the Soul of the Mystical Body. The whole
Office is drawn up by the Church, who is the Spouse of Christ and who in this has the special aid of Her
Divine Head. So that this prayer itself — apart from the One Who prays — has an intrinsic value that
makes it more pleasing to God than any other prayer which human ingenuity or devotion might contrive.
When we further remember that the priest says the Office as the official representative of the Church, we
see the force of the blunt remark that, “When a priest opens his breviary — no matter what sort of man he
may be — the Almighty has just got to listen!” The apparent lack of reverence in this remark disappears
when we recollect that it is merely a forcible way of stressing the supernatural character of the Office and
the “ambassadorial” character of the one who recites it.
There is no other vocal prayer in which the “priestly” function is so well exercised. A priest may
be said to be one who speaks to men in the name of God, and to God in the name of men. In the pulpit
and the confessional he does the former; the latter function he exercises especially in the Divine Office.
Nor must it be thought that this representative prayer is a mere formality, a relic of medievalism,
something which has lost its real significance and is no longer of practical importance. Let us reiterate
clearly and forcibly: after the sacrifice of the Mass, there is nothing a priest can do for the souls in his
charge so effectively as to recite the Divine Office in their name. There is no prayer which comes so near
to acting ex opere operato, and in which so little is left of the operans. It is a putting-on of the prayer of
Christ Himself, and our failure to appreciate it is really a result of our failure to have the “mind of Christ”
in us. In this connection, we must never forget the principle noted in our first chapter with regard to the
priest’s part in the mediation of grace. Despite the infinite merits of Christ’s prayers and sufferings,
despite the incalculable influence of Our Lady, there still remains something to be “filled-up” in prayer
and suffering on behalf of the Church by its members. The Divine Office is par excellence the way for
each priest to fill up the Prayer of Christ for His Body the Church, and in particular for the priest’s own
flock. Of such practical importance is this function, that we would be tempted to think that, if there be
anything wrong in the parish, the first enquiry to make as to its cause, would be to ask how does the
Pastor say his Mass and Office! That perhaps is an exaggeration, but it contains a truth that is often
forgotten. A more practical and detailed discussion of how to say the Office needs a further chapter. Let
us finish this one by a rather daring and somewhat exaggerated comparison — for the orthodox
interpretation of which we rely on the theological acumen of our readers. We might compare the private
prayer of the priest to the offering of the bread and wine before the consecration, and the recital of the
Divine Office to the offering of the consecrated species afterwards. It is true that the difference is not so
clear-cut or so complete, but there is something of “Christ” in the Divine Office that no amount of private
“devotion” can achieve. Our Lord’s last message to His priests must never be forgotten; if we are to bring
forth fruit, it must be by abiding in Him. There are few more certain ways of abiding in Him than by
saying the Office. If we approach it in that attitude, a lot of its difficulty will vanish.

THE OFFICE — THE PRAYER OF CHRIST

EVERY PRIEST HAS HEARD of — and tried — many devices that might help him to say the
Office well; to have an intention for each hour, or even each psalm, to associate each hour with some
mystery of Our Lord’s life and death; to visualize the Saint of the day, or the Angels or Our Lady or even
Our Lord Himself as saying the Office with him. Such plans may be used in so far as they prove to be
helpful; for many, however, they soon fail to help, and ultimately may even become a hindrance. First of
all one must allow oneself sufficient time to say the Office properly. While many priests find that a brisk
recitation is necessary to avoid distractions, precipitancy is always an enemy of devotion. The place, too,
is a difficult matter. The ideal of course would be to recite it before the Blessed Sacrament, but this is not
always practical, and so the sound rule is to say the Office in the way one finds best. There are some who
can be quite recollected in the middle of a crowd others must have peace and quiet. Some men find that
an effort to preserve external “recollection” is a distraction from internal recollection while others know
that their only hope is to preserve a proper exterior attitude. This problem, like those of duration and of
fixing a set time each day for the Office, is difficult, but they all must be faced and settled with decision.
We grant the innumerable difficulties, but where there is a will there is a way. We shall discuss the
finding of the will further down, and, that found, we are confident that the way will find itself. It is of
course impossible, even if there were time enough, to follow in detail all the thoughts of all the psalms.
One could, however, decide to say one hour, or one nocturn each day, a little more slowly than the rest;
the particular part being varied from week to week. Alternatively, one could pause at a particular verse in
each psalm — an ‘old friend’ with an old friend’s message and association, and these pet verses could be
marked as they come to one’s notice. It is excellent to associate each psalm with one or two particular
verses and to let the idea of those verses occupy one’s mind for the whole psalm. The question of
attention may be dealt with in that way. There is, of course, no need to remind readers of the doctrine of
St. Thomas on attention: we may attend to the saying of the Office, to the things said, or to the Person to
Whom they are said. In regard to the Office we may add a fourth possibility — that of attending to the
Person Who is really saying the Office.
This, to our mind, is the cardinal point of the whole question, and it is due to the fact that we
overlook it that most of our problems arise. If our habitual attitude with regard to the Office is correct,
and if we start the Office properly, the rest should look after itself. Of our attitude, we have already said
something; now let us consider how to start the Office. The Office itself gives us the answer to this
question. It opens with an appeal to God to hasten to our aid, and then immediately asserts the purpose of
our prayer and petition, by the Gloria Patri. Thus the Divine Office should commence with a spiritual
communion, which can hardly be better formulated than in its own opening words: Deus, in adjutorium
meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina. The sincerity of this petition is what matters. It
implies a realization of the inadequacy of our own prayer and a true zeal for the glory of God: it rises
from a lively sense of our need for union with Christ Who alone can give adequate praise and glory to the
Blessed Trinity, from a loyal sharing of His “mind,” and a confident trust in His merits and pleasingness
in the sight of the Father. How completely the sentiments are part of the priest depends greatly upon his
spiritual life.
We have already indicated some of the methods of developing this interior life. Let us here
summarize the result of some future discussions, by saying that the fundamental virtues required for the
Divine Office are those required for every other part of the spiritual life, namely, faith, hope, charity,
humility, and abandonment to the will of God. We must have faith; without it, we do not know God, we
do not see any value in prayer, we are ignorant of our share of Christ’s merits, we cannot realize that all
the work of our ministry is a supernatural one dependent on grace and upon those means by which grace
is brought down to earth. We must have hope; without it prayer is but folly. We must have charity, for
without charity all else profiteth nothing. It is only the love of God that can properly animate us in His
service; and it is especially necessary for the Divine Office, for there is less room there for the
gratification of self-love by our own activity and success than there is in some of the more active works.
This charity must manifest itself in the love of our neighbors. Otherwise we lie. So true is this of the
Divine Office, that we must commence its recitation not only by a communion with Christ, our Head and
Savior, but also by a communion with our neighbor — with the members of Christ, with those whom He
wishes to save. Unless we say the Office in union with Christ and in His Name, it is fruitless. Unless we
say the Office in union with the members of Christ, much of it is often meaningless. That is why so much
of the Office seems affected and futile; we are saying it in our own name and for ourselves, instead of in
the name of, and for the whole Christ.
When we open the Breviary, we must try to realize that we are entering in to a choir, in to a
congregation, in to a society, in to a unity made up of souls of every condition on earth together with
souls in heaven and souls in purgatory. The Office will never have anything like its true meaning for us
until we say it in this way — that is, until we say it as priests, not as private individuals. The opening of
the Breviary should be a “transfiguration” of the priest. At that moment we should put on the merits and
power of Christ, and the needs and weaknesses of our fellow-men. To regard the office merely as a
tedious obligation which must be discharged, or to expect that its primary effect and purpose should be
our own spiritual development and “edification” is quite wrong and unpriestly. The Office is said for the
edification of Christ, for His “building-up” and formation in the souls of all men; and above all for the
glory of God. We should turn to the Office as to a most potent means of supplying for our own cheerfully
recognized inadequacy to pray on behalf of our neighbor or to give glory to God. Only then will we be
content with the text of the Breviary, for even though it seems without “point” for us, it gives expression
to the needs of our neighbor and is full of value for God. It is, in fact, the voice of His well-beloved Son
in Whom He is well-pleased.
With these sentiments, we may find it easier to devote sufficient time to the Office to say it
properly. There is no need to summarize the enormous calls made upon every moment in the day of a
priest, or to stress the need for leaving him as much time as possible to devote to his ministry. We grant
all that. But it is precisely because a priest’s time is so valuable and because his responsibilities are so
weighty that he must be generous in devoting time to his Breviary. God is God. He demands the first
fruits and the best of the flock. To offer Him in sacrifice only what is “left over” is almost an insult. The
truth is that if the fundamental motive of our life is zeal for God’s glory, we shall be generous in giving
time to His direct praise in the Office; we shall desire to give Him as large a share as possible in our work
in His vineyard; we shall be earnest in calling down His grace in all our efforts; and we shall prefer that
the fruits of our work should come through prayer rather than through our own personal skill and activity.
Whereas if it be zeal for our own glory that animates us in the service of God, then we shall rather
despise the Breviary, wish to devote all our time to active works, and resent all that lessens our personal
sense of achievement. Every priest should take as his slogan the words of St. John the Baptist: “He must
increase — I must decrease.” If our zeal be true, we shall readily admit that without Him we can do
nothing; we shall gladly glory in our infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in us; and we shall
realize that precisely because there is so much to be done and so little time in which to do it, we must
devote all the time we can to imploring His co-operation in our ministry.
Perhaps the root of the whole matter is that we forget our fundamental principles. God created
the world for His glory, and our primary duty as creatures, but more especially as Christians and priests,
is to give Him that glory which is His due. We priests are sometimes impatient at having to recite long
verses of praise and worship when there is so much work to be done for souls. We forget that in thus
praising God we are discharging in a most efficient manner, one of the primary purposes of our creation
and of our priesthood. This sacrifice of praise is at all times due to God, but it has a special urgency in an
age when the forces of “anti-God” are openly organized and publicly reviling His Name. A sounder sense
or perspective would enable us to take a more correct view of the relative importance of such direct
service of God by praise and worship and the less direct service by the cure of souls. Both are our duty;
but neither one dispenses us from the other. Above all let us never forget that in the Christian restoration
we are to sing a new Canticle. The new Canticle is Christ — through Whom and with Whom and in
Whom is all the glory of God. In the Divine Office we put on Christ, Who as the Divine Word is the
eternal Canticle that God sings in the ecstasy of His Own Goodness. Is it any wonder that St. Benedict
calls the Divine Office the “Opus Dei”? In it we share in the work that is God’s own life and beatitude.

SINCERITY IN OUR SACRIFICE

THE CENTRAL ACT of the life of the priest, in which all else reaches its culmination and from
which all else should flow, is the Sacrifice of the Mass. Let us prescind for the moment from the
extraordinary nature of the Victim offered in the Mass and of the Priesthood in which we share, and
merely consider the act of offering sacrifice to God. St. Augustine says: “Every visible sacrifice is a sign
of invisible sacrifice,” and St. Thomas insists: “The sacrifice which is offered externally, represents the
inward spiritual sacrifice by which the soul offers itself to God.”. . . . The outward sacrifice is the
manifestation of the inward sacrifice by which “a man offers himself to God, as the First Cause of his
being, as the principle of his activity and the object of his beatitude,” (cf. Cont. Gen. iii. 120).
A sacrifice, in fact, says something by an action. The “something” is predetermined; it arises
from the nature of God and the relations which His creatures should have towards Him. When we offer a
sacrifice we must mean what we say; otherwise our enacted statement is a lie and a mockery. What then
does a priest say by sacrifice to God? He says in effect that God is God, and that he, the priest, gladly
recognizes God’s sovereignty, God’s goodness, God’s rights. He asserts that he is completely subject to
God — that he, and every moment of his day, are completely at God’s disposal.
A whole plan of the spiritual life could be derived from this statement as a starting point. The
sincerity of that repeated sacrificial assertion depends upon the degree to which our actions and
dispositions during the day are in accordance with the promises and the assertions which we make in the
morning by offering sacrifice to God. Now we all know that we are human and liable to fall seven times a
day. We renounce sin every time we go to confession, and yet we fall again before the end of the week,
so that if there be some discrepancy between our promise and our performance, we cannot immediately
assert that our promise was insincere. But, just as in the case of the penitent there is a sharp distinction
between the failure to keep a sincere promise through human frailty, and the failure to keep a promise
which was insincere from the very start, so too there are differences in our failures to fulfil our sacrificial
promise.
It is with this distinction in mind — a distinction familiar to every priest who bears confessions
— that we should examine our day to see how it agrees with the promise made by our sacrifice. Let us be
quite clear about it. For the moment we are leaving aside the part played by Christ as the Priest and as the
Victim in the Mass; we are leaving aside the fact that all worship and service is to be given to God
through Christ. We are simply concentrating our attention on the fact that, as priests, we are men who
daily offer sacrifice to God in so far as in us lies. If that sacrifice means anything, surely it means that we
are living by God and for God, and not by ourselves or for ourselves; it means that we are giving
ourselves completely to God — not only at the time of our ritual offering, but throughout the whole day.
This is an important point for every priest, for it means that each of us daily makes a ritual promise to
God of self-immolation, and this promise is not fulfilled merely by giving other souls to Him. We must
give Him our own self No matter how fruitful our day may be — or may seem to be — in good works, in
conversions, in apostolic triumphs, yet our daily sacrifice — considered merely as a personal sacrifice for
the moment, and prescinding from the intrinsic value and dignity of the August Victim offered in the
Mass — our daily sacrifice is a mockery, if we do not also, and before all else, give ourselves to God
even in our work.
This is an important point. There can be very many different motives animating our work for
souls. It is possible to approach the work of the ministry in almost the same spirit as the non-Catholic
regards his career or his business. We want to make the grade, we want to be a “success,” we want to
show others what we can do, we want the applause either of ourself or our fellowmen. We feel justified if
we “deliver the goods.”
But let us here observe that Christ delivered Himself; and although His thirst for souls is beyond
all telling, yet it is safe to say that it takes second place to His zeal for His Father’s glory. His first act on
becoming man was to offer Himself to God — by accepting God’s will in its entirety — as a substitute
for the sacrifices and holocausts which were so deficient in God’s eyes. And that disposition animated all
His actions.
Such must be our attitude and disposition also — quite apart from any connection with our work
or with the souls committed to our care. As priests, we must never forget the First Commandment. As
priests, we must never forget that we are men who have publicly offered sacrifice to God and that we
have said to God formally and ritually that He is God and we are His creatures that we are at His disposal
and that His will is the law of our life. Obviously we must mean what we say. It is true that the
obligations which this act imposes on us will arise with fresh force when we come to consider our
relations with Christ both as priests and as Christians. But even as creatures who offer sacrifice, we owe
God the carrying out of what we have promised. How are we to fulfil this promise? How are we to make
good this ritual statement of complete dependence and donation? First of all, by Faith, Hope and Charity.
These virtues need separate treatment and we shall consider them later. After these, almost all else can be
summed up in Humility and Obedience to God’s will.
In the course of this work, we shall frequently come back to humility as — in practice — the
fundamental virtue of the spiritual life, even though charity is the essence of it. We shall also consider
both humility and abandonment in their own place. But we want to stress here the connection between
true humility and our sacerdotal sacrifice. Quite apart from our dependence on Christ for our priestly
powers, and from our dependence upon Him as Victim to supply for the shortcomings of our own
personal sacrifice, we are still obliged as priests to be specially humble. For all we have is from God. Our
existence, our life, our faculties, our ability, our health — our all — come from Him. They are on loan —
so to speak — even though it be a permanent loan, but they belong to God. We assert our debt and
dependence, and acknowledge it, by offering sacrifice to Him. Every action even, depends upon Him for
its initiation and its performance; we cannot perform a single act without His co-operation. Again we
acknowledge that by our daily sacrifice. How then could we behave as if all were our own — as if we
were the source of all the good that we have or do? How then could we glory in our own success?
 Not only have we acknowledged by offering sacrifice that all this comes from God, but we have
also given ourselves to God. A very practical test, then, of the sincerity of our sacrifice and of the
harmony between it and our daily actions can be found when circumstances, or even the arrangements of
ecclesiastical superiors, hinder — or seem to hinder — the work of our ministry. Then, if we really mean
what we say to God by offering sacrifice — that we are completely at His disposal — we shall accept this
“pruning,” this frustration, in the same way as our Divine Model accepted all His Father’s
“arrangements.” If, on the contrary, we are really seeking self in the service of God, then we shall be
liable to murmuring, rebellion, anger and impatience, and all the other displays of wounded self-love.
Granted that our duty to God has a special reference to zeal for souls; yet that zeal must take
second place to our zeal for God’s glory. This latter zeal should show itself in humility and abandonment
to God’s will. In fact, if one should try to sum up in one word the correct attitude of a man who has
offered sacrifice to God, that one word would be patience. For, if we are priests, we are also in a sense,
victims, and patience is the true manifestation of our devotion to God. May we here refer again to the
pregnant phrase we quoted from Pius X in the first chapter as a slogan for the priest: “Idem velle, idem
nolle”? This patient acceptance of God’s will in all its manifestations is one of the best acts of true
reverence to God, our Sovereign Lord. But to patience, we must add confidence. We offer sacrifice to
testify that God is God; we therefore assert our conviction of His infinite Goodness. It is true that our
confidence will find a new support when we consider the dignity of the Divine Victim we offer in the
Mass, but even apart from that, we should be prepared to abandon ourselves to the infinite Goodness of
God in all the manifestations of His will, just as Our Master said on the Cross: “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I
commend My Spirit.” By doing so we give further testimony to our belief in His Goodness.
Too much stress cannot be laid upon the necessity of zeal for God’s glory as a predominant note
in the outlook of every priest. A priest should be as careful of God’s glory as he is in handling any holy
thing which belongs to God. He should be almost as quick to repress all attempts to steal God’s glory as
he would be to repress all irreverence to the Blessed Sacrament. This is an overstatement, but it only
emphasizes a truth. This same zeal should lead him to shun all deliberate self-glorification and counting
of his own “gains.” It is the tendency to write our own names upon the good works we do in God’s
service, by His grace, that hinders so much the success of our ministry. When we have succeeded
anywhere we tend to call ourselves fine fellows, but Our Lord told us to say we are unprofitable servants
even if we should succeed everywhere. The importance of humility, and its urgent necessity for our life
as priests, is so great that it demands special treatment in a later chapter. It has a close connection with
our zeal for God’s glory, which, with an appreciation of God’s infinity, will make us dissatisfied with any
personal sacrifice that we can make to God. The utter inadequacy of our own sacrifice, and of both our
power and our performance in His service, will make us look for something more worthy of Him,
something which will praise Him adequately and give us power to serve Him faithfully. This we will find
in the Blessed Eucharist, and we shall consider that august Sacrament in our next chapter.
But we have deliberately chosen to approach it in this “Old Testament” fashion, looking
forward, as it were, to the Redeemer Who is to come. It is an excellent way to approach our daily Mass:
first to offer ourselves in sacrifice with the bread and wine, and then to seek for something more worthy
of God in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The riches of that Sacrifice are so great that we have first stressed the
importance of our personal sacrifice, lest it should be overlooked and completely overshadowed in the
Sacrifice Christ has left to us in the Mass. The infinite dignity of the New Priest and the New Victim
Who there comes to our aid, should not let us be unmindful of the need for personal devotion and
personal sacrifice to God on our own part. It is just possible for a priest to approach to an erroneous
Luther-like attitude in this matter, feeling that it does not matter what his own dispositions are — it is the
Mass that matters. That in one sense is quite true. No personal unworthiness in the priest can take away
from the intrinsic value of the Mass, but it can take away tremendously from what the Mass applies to the
priest. It can take away tremendously from the personal union of the priest with the High Priest and
Victim as Whose minister he acts. We must, therefore, conform ourselves to the mind of Christ our
Model, and even though true zeal for God’s glory will lead us to seek divine aid in glorifying Him, yet it
will not make us unmindful of the need of our own personal devotion. By any sacrifice we offer to God
— if it be sincerely offered — we assure Him of our complete acceptance of His Sovereignty and our
total submission to His Will; we commit ourselves to a life of faith, hope, charity, humility and
abandonment to the will of our Father in Heaven.
 THE MASS — THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST

IN THE LAST CHAPTER, we considered the priest as a man who daily offers sacrifice to God,
testifying his adoration, his complete dependence and his willing submission in God’s regard. We
abstracted completely from the Person of the High Priest in whose priesthood all others are but
participators, and from the extraordinary nature of the sacrifice offered in the Mass on behalf of the
whole Church. We merely stressed the fact that a priest offers sacrifice, and that to his exterior sacrifice
there should correspond an interior sacrifice, which in turn demands that his whole life should tend to be
in accord with the meaning of his sacrificial statement. For a sacrifice says something to God, and the
priest offering sacrifice must mean what he says by it — not only at the moment of offering, but as a
permanent and ruling disposition in his life.
We indicated how much this could mean for the whole life of a priest, but we reserved a fuller
discussion until we had considered the tremendous additional force that our conclusions would acquire
from the special nature of the sacrifice offered by the Catholic priest of the New Law in the sacrifice of
the Mass. The Mass, according to St. Thomas and St. Augustine, is “the perfect sacrament of our Lord’s
Passion.” That is to say, it is related to the Sacrifice of Calvary in somewhat the same way as the
consecrated species are related to the Body and Blood of Christ. Just as the Blessed Sacrament gives the
Body of Christ a new “location” in space and time, where It is really, truly and substantially — but
“sacramentally” — present, so the double consecration at Mass gives the Sacrifice of Calvary a new
location in space and time, where It also is really, truly and substantially — but “sacramentally” —
present. In each case the Real Presence is effected and located by a “sign” — by the accidents of
something else. The “accidents” of the consecration “locate” the sacrifice of the Cross. The Mass is
Calvary in sacramental form, and the sacrifice we priests offer to God each morning is the sacrifice
which Christ offered on Calvary. In our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary, we can distinguish an interior and an
exterior sacrifice. The interior sacrifice of Himself was but the culminating act of a lifelong series of acts
of complete devotion to God. In fact we are tempted to imagine Our Lord as summing up His whole life
and love in one great act, and giving it exterior expression in the sacrifice of the Cross. His whole
sacrifice, interior and exterior, He enshrined in the Sacrament of the Eucharist for our benefit. The Mass,
therefore, contains all the spiritual realities of the Cross. St. Thomas puts it this way: “We do not say that
Christ is daily crucified and killed (i.e. in the Mass), because both the acts of the Jews and the
punishment of Christ are transitory. Yet those things which carry with them Christ’s relation to God the
Father are said to be done daily (in the Mass); these are, to offer, to sacrifice, and the like. On that
account the victim is perpetual and was offered once by Christ in this manner that it might be daily
offered by His members,” (4 Sent. XII). We may safely assume that “those things which carry with them
Christ’s relation to God the Father” include supreme worship and love, perfect obedience and
superabundant satisfaction for sin, in fact, the whole interior and exterior sacrifice of Christ. That is what
we offer to God in the Mass. No wonder Trent tells us: “The faithful of Christ can do no work more holy,
more divine than this tremendous mystery,” (Sess. xxii, c.2). It is then the most important act of the
priest’s life and we need not apologize for dwelling upon it. But let us first consider it in its relation to
the priest’s own interior life.
When a priest offers up the Mass, he offers it, of course, as a minister of Christ Who is the
principal offerer, and is a representative of the whole Church — the Body of Christ. But that must not
blind us to the fact that the priest offers up the sacrifice of the Mass as his own sacrifice also. He must,
then, mean what the Mass says. Now the Mass is Our Lord’s sacrifice, and expresses Our Lord’s interior
sacrifice which was, as we have shown, the summing-up and culmination of His whole life. So that in
making the Mass his own, the priest has to make Our Lord’s interior disposition his own too, and he has
to make those dispositions permeate his whole life. The priest’s position is somewhat the reverse of that
of Our Lord. Our Lord first lived His life of perfect concordance with the will of God, and then summed
it up in an interior sacrifice which found expression in the exterior sacrifice of the Cross. The priest
“takes over” this sacrifice in the Mass and makes it his own. He therefore has to endeavor to make his
interior sacrifice correspond with the exterior sacrifice sacramentally renewed in the Mass, and he then
has to make his whole life correspond to that interior sacrifice! If the figure of speech is not too
irreverent, one could say that our Lord’s whole life and dispositions are “telescoped” into His sacrifice on
Calvary, which becomes the sacrifice of the priest at Mass. The priest then has to expand and apply that
sacrifice to his whole life and dispositions. It is true that, in the order of time, the Passion of Christ is first
applied to the soul of the priest at Baptism — but even so, Baptism only looks forward to the Blessed
Eucharist; and — are we not baptized into the death of Christ?! Each Mass, as it were, re-enacts and
renews the whole process.
Such a commitment — to live as Christ lived — would be a terrifying obligation for any mere
human being, but the very sacrifice which lays so great an obligation on the priest also gives him in the
Communion, the strength and the means to carry it out. “I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth
me,” (Phil. iv, 3). “I live, now no longer I, but Christ it is who liveth in me,” (Gal. ii, 2 o). There can,
therefore, be no question of regarding a priest as a person who merely brings the faithful to God by his
preaching and ministerial work, and for whom a life of devotion is something to be desired but not
essential, something to be recommended but not commanded. The very sacrifice the priest offers — and
this is his principal duty — devotes him as completely to God as Our Lord Himself. If a priest only knew
it, his daily Mass is — as far as he is concerned — more or less a deliberate lie if he be not endeavoring
to live a life of holiness. Of course, we all know that the value of the Mass for the Church is quite
independent of the dispositions of the minister. But we also know that the value of the Mass as applied to
the priest can be very dependent upon his own dispositions. It is obvious then that as a personal sacrifice
it could even be meaningless if his own life and interior sacrifice do not in some way correspond to what
the Mass says. To develop and emphasize this point we devoted the foregoing chapter to a Consideration
of the priest as a person who offers sacrifice. We wish to stress the fact that first, by offering any sacrifice
to God he professes his complete devotion and submission to Him, and that secondly, by offering the
sacrifice of the Mass he professes his willingness to be conformed to Christ in His sonship and service to
the Father. St. Thomas sums up the point in discussing whether the priest should consume the sacrament
at Mass. “Whoever offers a sacrifice should be a partaker (particeps) of the sacrifice, because the
sacrifice which is offered externally is a sign of the interior sacrifice by which one offers oneself to God.
Whence by the fact that he receives of the sacrifice he shows that he interiorly shares in the sacrifice,”
(Summa 3. 82. 4). And Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Miserentissimus Deus, insists that even the
faithful should add their own acts to those of Our Lord: “We must join together, in the august sacrifice of
the Blessed Eucharist, the act of immolation made by the priest with that of the Faithful so that they too,
may offer themselves up as ‘a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God’, (Rom. xii, 1). Therefore, St.
Cyprian dared to affirm that ‘the sacrifice of the Lord is not complete as far as our sanctification is
concerned unless our offerings correspond to His Passion,’ (Ep. 63, n. 381).”
We once more stress the point that there is no question of making the intrinsic value of the Mass
depend upon the personal dispositions of the priest. Our whole concern in this discussion is to determine
what should be the life and dispositions of the priest in view of the fact that he offers the sacrifice of the
Mass. The Mass renews the sacrifice of Calvary and makes it ours, this sacrifice is the perfect expression
of our Lord’s life and dispositions. If then the Mass is to be truly our sacrifice, we must so live that it is
also a true expression of our life. To do this, we should offer ourselves at each Mass with the bread and
wine at the offertory, accept in advance all that God’s will disposes or permits for us during the day, and
then endeavor to spend the rest of the day in accordance with those dispositions. This devotion to God’s
will has a wonderful reward, which is foreshadowed in the very sequence of events at Mass. Just as God
changes the bread and wine offered up at Mass into the Body and Blood of Christ, so, too, He will, by His
paternal providence and the sequence of events, effect our “consecration,” our incorporation, our
transformation into Christ. By doing the will of God, we shall abide in the Vine and become more and
more closely united to our Head and High Priest. In pledge of that transformation, and in order to give us
the strength to do and to suffer according to God’s will, our Lord gives us His own Body and Blood as
the Food of our souls in the communion of the Mass. In fact, if we may sum it up — when the priest
offers himself up as a willing victim at the offertory, our Lord “says Mass” with him; that is, He accepts
him as He accepts the bread and wine, and changes him by the gradual effect of His will into Himself.
There is a deep significance in those words addressed to us priests at our ordination: “Agnoscite quod
agitis, imitamini quod tractatis!” If we imitate our Lord in His devotion to the will of the Father, that will
becomes for us an all-consuming fire — a transforming consecration which will make us one with Christ.
Are not the very words of consecration: “This is My Body”?
In His Encyclical on Reparation, Pius XI sums up the matter thus: “In the degree to which our
oblation and sacrifice will the more perfectly correspond to the sacrifice of our Lord, that is to say, to the
extent that we have immolated love of self and our passions and crucified our flesh in that mystical
crucifixion of which the Apostle writes, so much the more plentiful fruits of propitiation and of expiation
will we gain for ourselves and others.”
The Holy Father is writing for all the faithful, but his words apply with added force to us priests.
Even as Christians we are baptized into the death of Christ, our “old man” has been sentenced to death
and Christ has been born in our soul. Our life’s work, even as Christians, is to carry out this death-
sentence on ourself so that Christ may live in us, in all our actions and in every moment of our lives.
Every Mass we say or hear should remind us of this “conversion” from ourself to Christ. What we wrote
of the Divine Office — as an “entering-in” to the prayer of Christ is only typical of the whole life of the
Christian, but it is especially typical of the whole life of the priest, which must be an “entering-in” to the
whole life of Christ. For Christ is our Way, our Truth, and our Life: He is our All. A fuller discussion of
the significance of the Mass will be found in the present writer’s book This Tremendous Lover from
which we quote the following summary:
“Christ lived a life of complete and humble abandonment to the will of His Father. His whole
life was one long interior sacrifice of himself to God. He gave ritual expression to this interior sacrifice
by the external sacrifice of the Cross. He has given us this external sacrifice by the Mass and in the Mass,
to express our interior sacrifice to God. This interior sacrifice of ours must then be like His — a sincere,
humble and complete abandonment to the will of Our Father in Heaven, not only at the moment of the
Mass, but in every moment of our live’.”

VICTIMS WITH CHRIST

AS CHRISTIANS, we are men who have been baptized into the sacrificial death of Christ; as
priests, we are men who daily offer that same sacrifice of Christ in sacramental form. In the Mass, as the
present Holy Father tells us, Christ “offers not only Himself as Head of the Church to the Heavenly
Father, but in Himself His mystical members as well,” (Encycl. on The Mystical Body). Each priest at
Mass, as we urged in the previous chapter should add his personal offering of himself to that made by
Christ — for by offering sacrifice, he protests publicly that he stands completely at God’s disposal. If,
then, we are sincere Christians and sincere priests, we shall imitate what we perform, we shall be partners
and partakers not only with Christ as Priest, but also with Christ as Victim. In other words, we shall daily
make our own the sentiments expressed by Our Lord on entering into the world — “Behold I come that I
may do Thy Will, O God!” This involves a deliberate daily decision to accept the “body” God has fitted
to us; to be what God wills us to be, to be a Christian, to be a priest, to be this particular priest, in this
particular parish, with all these particular qualities, this history, these surroundings, obligations, successes
and failures — with all, in fact, that God’s Providence has arranged for us.
It may seem superfluous to stress this idea, yet it is often the starting-point of our failure to be all
that a priest should be. There are many different roads that lead to the priesthood; there are many
different points of view, many different tastes or hopes, and many different temperaments, that bring us
to the work of the ministry; yet, once there, we have to take the priesthood as it is, not as we would like
it, or as we thought it to be. To illustrate what is meant, let us take the case of the man who becomes a
priest to save souls and envisages the priesthood as a life of direct — and successful — apostolic activity
in various forms. He gets into a parish where everything seems to hamper his efforts; finance is bad, co-
operation non-existent, prejudice rampant, and he falls foul of his own flock through mistaken zeal.
Diocesan regulations tie his hands; even the Bishop seems to stand between him and the success of his
ministry. If his whole spiritual life is tied up with the successful saving of souls, his apparent failure to
achieve this may mean the end of his fervor and the beginning of “trouble.” On the contrary, if he accepts
the priesthood as it really is — a participation in the priesthood of Christ with the de congruo obligation
of self-sacrifice with Christ — he can and should integrate all his experience into his spiritual life. His
efforts for souls are to be made as part of his work — as fulfillment of the offering he makes of himself at
Mass. The fruit of his efforts depends on God. If God permits that there be no fruit — or at least no
apparent fruit — well, that is God’s business; while the priest’s business is to do God’s will. If
regulations and circumstances hamper his activities — well, the nails hampered our Lord’s activities on
the Cross. Yet it is on the Cross that Christ saves the whole of mankind. That is the essence of His
redeeming work; the rest is only an integral part; and if Christ deigns to share the essential part of His
priesthood with us, can we complain?
To a man living an interior life, all things can work together for good; and no failure in the
ministry is for him really a failure. Apart from sin, his worst failures will be his greatest success, for it is
by abiding in Christ that His apostles are to bring forth fruit, and there is no better way of abiding in
Christ than by doing the will of God. A somewhat similar difficulty appears when a priest is faced with
making efforts on behalf of souls, out of all proportion to the extent of the possible harvest, or to the
probability of reaping it. If he is a man who measures the value of his work by its immediate and
apparent fruits, he will quickly lose heart, he will give up trying, and he may soon cease to be generous
with God. But if he lives in accordance with his morning sacrifice, he will spend himself in his ministry
as far as prudence will allow, especially when he recalls that all he does for a single soul is done for
Christ, even though his efforts lead nowhere. There is no need to examine all the various possibilities.
Each priest can work out the idea for himself, and most of us know what frustration means. If, however, a
man will but regard his day’s work and experiences as the implementation of his sacrificial offering of
himself together with Christ at Mass, nothing can separate him from the love of God. In this St. Paul is
both a model and a master, who but repeats the practice and the preaching of the Divine Master.
Yet another point: This daily decision “to be a priest” has an importance in another way. It is
true that as ordination approached, most of us more less definitely cut ourselves off from all that we felt
was foreign to the priesthood. But as time went on, we found that our notions of the obligations of a
priest could be modified in the light of our own and others’ experience. If, then, at the time of ordination,
we had accepted some of the obligations with reluctance, this reserve tends to show itself later on in a
lowering of our standards and a compromise with our desires. Now it cannot be denied that every prudent
man has to learn by experience and has to adjust his notions accordingly. Views that are too strict have to
be eased a little, lest the too tightly stretched strings should snap; defenses that are found weak must be
strengthened. But under guise of this prudent adjustment there can creep in a compromise with the world
— with the “old man” — that may lead to very regrettable consequences. That is where the daily renewal
of our sacrifice can operate to check rapine in the holocaust. Every priest needs recreation and relaxation.
His amusement and his pleasures are limited to some extent by diocesan law and custom, as well as by
the danger of scandal and of excess. Now there should be no tampering with these limits. Even if they do
not seem to be necessary in our own particular case, yet they should be observed as part of our sacrificial
promise, as a means of being united with Christ. “He that abideth in Me . . .!”
There is another aspect of our self-sacrifice which needs frequent examination and renewal.
Having given ourselves completely to God, we should be ever on our guard against vain glory, empty
ambition, avarice, the desire for notoriety, or popularity; in particular, against envy and jealousy of our
colleagues’ success, which should never be allowed to take possession of us. We have laid ourselves
down on the altar with and in Christ, and if God chooses to strip us of those things that many men prize,
He is not only taking us at our word, He is also fitting us for a heavenly crown of unspeakable glory, and
conforming us to the image of His Son. This is a point that must never be forgotten. Just as the
Communion is the final action in the sacrifice that commenced with the Offertory, so is union with Christ
the final result of our offering of ourself to God in practice as well as in word during the day. It is by
doing the will of God that we truly live up to our title of “Father”, and indeed our Lord told us that by
doing the will of God we become His mother. The whole of His address at the Last Supper is a tender
plea for union with Him in every moment of our lives.
It is not easy to avoid being vague here. We are trying to urge a new attitude to the old routine;
to widen the notion of a priest’s vocation so as to include self-sacrifice and a share in Christ’s
Victimhood as its principal part, rather than the more limited view which confines it to an active and
successful ministry in the service of souls. If this wide view is once adopted everything else falls into its
place and is found reasonable and useful. But it is not easy to bring oneself to adopt this view. It means
renouncing all self-centered activity; it means an equal readiness to do little things for God as to do great
things for Him. The test of the sincerity of our devotion to God is found in our willingness to serve Him
in little things. There the motive can be only supernatural; in big things the motive may be sheer self-
seeking. This view means an end to the deliberate search for self-satisfaction in God’s service. It means
that we realize that it is God Who is to be satisfied. “I always do the things that please Him,” (John. viii,
29). It means fighting against that attitude which, instead of trying to please God, is ever striving to
please self without displeasing God. The cause of the mediocrity that is sometimes found in our spiritual
life is to be found in our failure in little things, in the search for our own satisfaction, in our reluctance to
detach ourselves from our own pet projects — in a word, our rejection of the Cross.
There it is. We must take up our cross daily. No service or success in the ministry of souls will
exempt us from that Divinely imposed task. If we are men of faith and have the mind of Christ, we shall
readily believe that we probably do more for souls when on the cross of frustration, than when we are on
the Thabor of sensible success. No one can question our Lord’s zeal for souls; yet He spent thirty years in
obscurity in Egypt and Nazareth and let His active life be cut short by the shameful Crucifixion. That
very Cross was St. Paul’s only glory and only hope. He died daily to himself, glorying in his infirmities,
that the power of Christ might dwell in him. For the Cross is a Tree of Life to all who embrace it
willingly. The ideal priest is one in whom Christ lives and who acts for Christ in others, and for God in
Christ; we “deny” ourselves only in order that Christ may live in us. There can be no greater fruit of our
lives than Christ — for He is all. Let us sum it all up in two quotations: “In what then doth the progress
and perfection of a man consist? In offering thyself with thy whole heart to the Divine will, not seeking
the things that are thine either in little or great, in time or eternity,” (Imitation, Book 3). And our Lord’s
own exhortation says everything: “If any man will come after Me, let him ‘deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow Me. For he that will save his life will lose it; and he that shall lose his life for My sake
shall find it,” (Matt. xvi: 24, 25). — For He is the Way, the Truth, the Life: He is ALL.

THE PRIEST AND RECREATION

LIVING IN AN AGE of which the passionate pursuit of pleasure is characteristic, the secular
priest may fall into one of two opposite errors. He may drift with the tide and seek pleasure as an end in
itself with ardent regularity, or he may reject it altogether as incompatible with a true spiritual life. That
the first error is a serious one, is obvious. That the second, too, has its dangers is a lesson of experience.
Every human being needs some relaxation and some pleasure. A man may find most of his pleasure in his
work, but even then he must change his occupation occasionally; otherwise he goes stale and becomes
inefficient. Some recreation is necessary.
But there is a great difference between using pleasure to achieve proper and efficient living, and
using life to achieve mere pleasure. The ideal thing would be to have such a degree of detachment that
one could use pleasure just in the right measure that is necessary for the efficiency of one’s particular
work, and could then turn away from it without regret. A priest should be master of his pleasures, never
their slave. When he is their master, those pleasures which do not involve sin or scandal can be integrated
into his spiritual life. They can, in fact, be used to make us better priests and Christians. But to do so is
not always easy.
To come to details, let us take the use of tobacco as an example. In this, as in kindred matters,
much depends on local customs and standards. What is considered as shocking in one place is regarded as
quite natural in another. For our own part, we cannot accept the view that there is not a natural and a
normal use for all such things, but we cannot deny that their use often develops into an abuse. It is true,
too, that even their natural use may seem opposed to the spirit of mortification that one would expect in a
priest. But, first things first! It is far more important for a priest to curb his temper than to curb his taste
for tobacco. One single outbreak of temper in the confessional, or even elsewhere may cause the loss of a
soul whom Christ died to save. If a cigar in the evening will remove that danger and soothe a man’s
irritation, is he not justified in using it? It is quite another thing if the priest becomes enslaved by
tobacco. But temperance can be exercised in the control of these matters, and quite a fair degree of
mortification can be called for in keeping one’s tobacco consumption down to a proper limit. Perhaps we
speak less wisely, but we are haunted by the specter of a priest, highly mortified in all things else, but
with a temper that makes it impossible to approach him, or with a pride of his own self-control that
vitiates the whole of it. If we start with the rule: ne quid nimis, time and prayer may bring us the grace to
achieve a more complete renunciation.
Some may ask — why not start with complete renunciation of all such pleasures? Well, we grant
that the ideal would be such a degree of mortification in which one’s real recreation would be found in
prayer and in the things of the spirit. But we are dealing with human nature and with men who are not yet
saints. We must remember their weakness. Every priest who has sat for hours in the confessional, trying
to keep his temper, trying to dispose obstinate sinners, trying to convince the doubting, trying to be kind
to the insolent, trying to comfort those who are in trouble, trying to forget all the filth he hears, will
realize the benefit of anything that will take him out of himself for a couple of hours. A man who has to
be continually ready to improvise answers to questions on all sorts of topics, to meet all sorts of
arguments, to find new ideas for a weekly sermon, or — what is still harder — to find new ways of
putting old ideas across, must get some relaxation unless he be a mystic of a high order. If he does not get
some chance to relax, the strain may have serious effects. And eventually a form of escapism may
develop which leads to something far more serious than mere amusement. Even if things do not go so far,
one may find one’s spiritual life and exercises becoming tepid and even distasteful, simply because of
that fatigue and lack of energy which can be such an obstacle to a sound spiritual life. To put it bluntly,
the smooth running of an engine calls for a safety valve on the boiler, and if one must blow off steam, it
is far better to do so through the legitimate valve than to wait for an explosion!
Some relaxation, then, is necessary, but there must be limits to its quantity and its quality. The
modem craze for the cinema has not left the ranks of the clergy untouched. Where such shows are not
banned to them by legislation or by the danger of scandal, the man who makes occasional use of them to
escape from his worries, to get an idea of what sort of food his flock is feeding on, to ease his mind by
genuine comedy or to gratify a genuine artistic interest, can hardly be blamed. It is quite another matter
when a priest becomes so much enslaved to the craze, or so devoted a follower of certain stars, that he
simply must see a show twice or thrice weekly. There is here, first of all, an inordinate attachment that
can be an obstacle to a proper spiritual life. We are far from the idem velle, idem nolle that should be our
motto. But there is further the fact that the cinema — perhaps undesignedly, but none the less definitely
— is, taken as a whole, propaganda for paganism. We are not now speaking of indecency or of gross
immorality. We have rather in mind the effect produced by the quiet insistence on the struggle — often
unscrupulous — for a materially happy ending with absolutely no reference to God. Virtue, if any, is just
natural virtue. The supernatural is left out; and if the repeated achievement of happiness without it has
any lesson is it not this — that the supernatural is quite unnecessary? Even for a priest, constant exposure
to such propaganda is not without its dangers. Further, the usual theme of boy-meets-girl, is hardly the
best help to celibate living — except, perhaps, for the cynical. And even where there is no indecency, the
constant “glamorization” of woman is not calculated to produce a quiet and clean imagination in the
celibate beholder. For the casual visitor whose spiritual life is vigorous and well-rooted, these things may
produce a healthy reaction. But the regular fan can easily be swept slowly along by the insistent pull of
the quiet constant tide. The casual visitor may profit, too, by the sheer passivity of the pleasure. For him,
it may be a badly needed relaxation of tension. But the regular devotee is developing a very bad habit of
handing over control of his emotions and his mind to — well, perhaps he knows to whom. He is also
letting his own personal power of amusing himself atrophy. It is in this inducement of passivity of mind
and will that, in our view, lies one of the greatest dangers of the cinema. “Bread and circuses”
symptomize the beginning of the degenerate end.
Apart from all that, a priest lets himself down in a very real sense when he just must go to the
cinema two or three times a week. Movie standards, movie ideals, movie performances are governed by
the box-office, which is really the voice of the mob. The film director must play to the lowest common
factor of the crowd. If that is the appeal which captivates the priest-one may well ask, who is he to lead
men to better things? Even if the priest is still above that low level, he will soon be dragged down to it.
Good taste in natural things is something which no priest can afford to neglect, even if it be only as a
bulwark for the preservation of his spiritual tastes, or as a foundation for their development. Now, of all
forms of entertainment, few fall lower than the level of the cinema where taste is concerned.
Mutatis mutandis, much of what we have said might be applied to some forms of light reading.
However, there can be a great difference. There are works of fiction — even lighter fiction — that can be
integrated into the spiritual life of a priest. They may help him to understand his flock, they may start
him thinking and give him ideas for sermons, they may distract him from the burden of temptation or of
worry long enough to give him time to get his second wind. But they can also be a snare, wasting his
time, filling his mind with worldly thoughts, pandering to his less respectable emotions or spoiling his
taste for serious reading. Here, too, it is a question of use and abuse.
In fact, there is nothing to be gained by going into all the forms of recreation. Not everyone will
agree even with what we have written. Let us then state our principle: In all these things we presume that
a priest daily attends to the essentials of his spiritual life — his spiritual reading, his reflection, and his
private prayer. We assume that he says Mass daily with some sense of the meaning for his own life of the
sacrificial act which he performs. We assume, in fact, that he is a spiritual man, a man of Christ, who is
trying to abide in the Vine. Presupposing all that, we are prepared to set the limits of possible recreation
fairly widely, relying on the spiritual tastes of the priest to induce him to pick his path carefully within
those limits. And while we would exclude no form of recreation that can be prudently and becomingly
used by the priest, we have the hope that his growing intimacy with Our Lord, and sharing of His Spirit
will lead him to turn away from these make-believe pleasures of man to the joys of Christ’s company,
somewhat in the same way as a growing taste in art or music or literature makes a man impatient and
intolerant of the sham and shoddiness of all that is cheap, superficial, and mean.
Others would prefer to set the limits to a priest’s play as closely as possible from the very
beginning. We cannot deny that the view has its “probability,” and we would not care to undertake the
responsibility of opposing it. Yet we cannot but feel that bonds that are set too tight are apt to snap —
that too many “dont’s” will tend to make a man intolerant of all limitations. The English-speaking world
is shot through with a Puritanism that at times tends to color even Catholic practice. It can produce a
tendency to Phariseeism and to that pride that is such an obstacle to true holiness. Liberty of spirit is a
necessary element for true spiritual development. Different men need different medicines, and recreation
is a medicine. But our liberty must not be used to the scandal of our neighbor. Even if all things are
lawful, not all are expedient. Even here, St. Paul has his message for us: “Take heed lest your liberty
become a stumbling-block to the weak,” (I Cor. viii: 9).
In this chapter we are dealing with recreation quite independently of the question of clerical
mortification. That will form the subject of a separate chapter. And there are two important forms of
recreation to which we can only allude. Reading — in the sense of the study of some interesting subject
— is one. Not everyone has a taste for such reading, but it is well worth trying to cultivate it. History,
biography, science, mathematics, have often been a safe and healthy refuge for many a tired priest.
Physical exercise is the other. It is a pity that there are not more facilities for such exercise for priests.
Twenty minutes’ vigorous exercise, especially if it can be taken in the open air, can do wonders to knit
up the raveled sleeve of care, to relieve irritation and to get rid of depression. Manual labor plays such an
integral part in the life of a contemplative monk that we may be forgiven for dropping a hint as to its
spiritual value for the clergy, where it is possible. Many a priest owes much of his vitality, spiritual as
well as corporal, to his garden.
So much depends on local conditions that it is impossible to descend to details. Our view is that
if the priest is careful to nourish his spiritual life and to preserve his intimacy with Our Lord, he may set
the limits of the choice of his permissible recreation fairly widely; but he must avoid inordinate
attachment and entanglement. In a word he must be truly temperate.

MORTIFICATION

THE CONTINUAL EXHORTATION to mortification which is found throughout the Gospels,

and which rings out so insistently from the lips of St. Paul, is a favorite theme with all spiritual writers,
ancient and modern. It is one, therefore, which no priest may reject without rashness. It is, of course,
possible to argue that individual writers here and there perhaps exaggerate its importance, yet the
absolute necessity of some degree of mortification is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that we
inherit a fallen nature — a nature in which the lower powers are in revolt against the higher, a nature in
which the flesh lusteth against the spirit. If we wish to succeed in preventing those lower powers, which
may be collectively designated as concupiscence, from taking over control and making it impossible for
us to love God with our whole heart and our whole soul, we must make some provision for the
establishment of law and order and for the maintenance of effective government in our own selves.
It is sometimes argued that the life of a diocesan priest who is faithful to the duties of his state
and truly zealous in the works of his ministry, already contains all the exercise in self-control and self-
denial that is necessary. But St. Paul’s zeal and energy in his ministry is beyond all question; yet even he
found it necessary to chastise his body and bring it into subjection lest he himself should suffer
shipwreck. His example should warn us that the necessary habit of self-denial will not be built up if self-
indulgence is only then curbed when the work of the ministry is in question. For unless there is a positive
habit of self-control for its own sake and for all that it means in our personal relations with God, self-
indulgence will take over command when we are off duty in regard to our ministry. But we are never off
duty in regard to our own soul and above all, in regard to God. There must be, therefore, in our daily life
some positive “non-utilitarian” acceptance or infliction of discomfort (e.g. in our posture when seated),
and some deliberate refusal to yield to the otherwise legitimate demands of self-love (e.g. in the use of
food, drink, or tobacco, etc.). This need not be continual, but it must be frequent enough to establish a
habit and also a mortified attitude of mind. There are other and perhaps greater motives for mortification,
but even in acting from the highest of them we must never lay aside a prudent discretion and moderation.
The decision to impose any mortification upon oneself must also include some decision as to the limit of
the imposition; otherwise we shall be very slow even to commence the practice. For our very urge to
yield to the prompting of grace will be stifled by the fear that we are letting ourselves in for something
that has no limits. Where is it all going to stop? If we lay aside this particular cigar, shall we ever again
be able to smoke with peace of mind? If we sit up straight in our chair this time, shall we ever be able to
relax our muscles with a tranquil conscience? Consultation with a prudent director can be of great help in
dealing with this difficulty. But there are some principles that may aid us to solve our difficulties
ourselves. We should always remember that liberty of spirit and peace of mind must be preserved as
essential factors in a healthy spiritual life. Anything optional, which interferes with their maintenance,
can be tranquilly set aside. Again, apart from the case of mortification imposed by law or duty, one may
prudently decide to limit oneself to such voluntary mortifications as can be done cheerfully. If we find
ourselves murmuring and saddened at the thought of some optional sacrifice, it is probably better to omit
it and to accept the humiliation of being so weak. In this way we could achieve a much more important
mortification, namely, the mortification of ourself. But it is essential that we do not omit interior
mortification. We must carry our mortification into the realm of our thoughts. Day-dreaming, reveries,
memories, and anticipations, should be carefully controlled. Of course, a too rigid control of the
imagination could be dangerous, for it could easily lead to a reaction in which we would find ourselves
carried to the other extreme; but a gentle, prudent watchfulness over the workings of our memory and our
imagination is essential for a sound spiritual life. To sum it up in another way: No athlete can run a race
unless he trains beforehand; no boxer can reach even the end of the first round unless he has prepared
himself by training. So, too, no man can say “no” to himself under temptation unless he trains himself in
self-denial. Therefore the Christian must get into training. And he must get into training even in his
thoughts, for no man who always says “yes” in his thoughts, will be able to say “no” when it comes to
action.
To this need of self-control arising from the effects of original sin on our inherited human nature
there are added further motives arising out of our own personal sins. The self-indulgence of sin still
further increases the rebellion of the lower powers that original sin initiated, and repeated sins leave
behind them bad habits, against which we must make war. But apart from that, we know that God’s
justice demands reparation, and we know that purgatory is provided as a means of undergoing the
temporal punishment due to our sins. We also know that the pains of purgatory, while being
incomparably more severe than any sufferings of this life, are nevertheless quite without merit. Prudence,
then, would suggest that we choose the easy way of doing our penance here and now, especially since
that penance can earn for us a high measure of merit. But the love of God whom we have offended is a
much higher motive (and one, incidentally, which can make our penance still more meritorious). In this
connection every priest should read the Encyclical of Pius XI on Reparation to the Sacred Heart. The
Holy Father exhorts the faithful to make reparation for the sins of men, and he points out that even
though the praise and the satisfaction offered up by Christ Himself are alone worthy of God, yet we
should add to them our own personal contribution. He even quotes St. Cyprian who affirmed that “the
sacrifice of Our Lord is not complete as far as our own sanctification is concerned, unless our offerings
and our sacrifices correspond to His Passion,” (St. Cyprian: Ep. 63, No. 381).
So far, however, we have been considering the priest as an ordinary Christian. But the priest, and
especially the diocesan priest, is something far more than an ordinary person. He is, in fact, something
quite extraordinary. He is taken from among men and is ordained for men in the things that appertain to
God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins. . . . And therefore he ought, as for the people, so
also for himself, to offer for sins. Now it is true that the principal work of the priest in this matter is to
offer up Christ’s own sacrifice as contained in the Mass for the sins of the people. But still, even though
there be no question of a strict obligation, may we not see a certain fittingness, may we not hear a gentle
invitation — a counsel almost — that he should add something of his own to the sacrifice of His Friend
and Master? St. Paul found himself urged to fill up in his body the things that are wanting of the sacrifice
of Christ for His Body, the Church. Our Lord Himself warned the disciples that a certain sort of devil can
only be overcome by prayer and fasting. Can we priests, charged with the salvation of souls, neglect the
hints contained in such examples? This is a point upon which we priests might well examine ourselves.
When a hard-working priest has checked up on all his duties and activities and can find nothing wrong,
when he thinks he has tried all the known ways of tackling the problems of his parish, it is easy for him to
persuade himself that if there is anything wrong in the parish, it is not his fault — there is nothing more
he can do about it. He has tried every form of direct action, but men’s hearts are still unchanged. When
we reach such an impasse, it would be well before disowning all responsibility for the situation, to
consider the question of vicarious penance and reparation.
Prayer should be the foundation of our ministry; and our “fasting” — which here stands for all
penitential work — might well be the crown of it. It would seem that there are special graces that will not
be given to souls unless someone pays a special price for them in penance and suffering. Does not Pius
XII write: “The salvation of many depends on the prayers and the voluntary penances which the members
of the mystical Body of Jesus Christ offer for this intention”? (cf. Encycl. Mystici Corporis). Now, we are
priests. We represent God before the people, but we also represent the people before God. If then there is
need for some special impetration and reparation on their behalf to obtain the grace of their conversion,
who is more obviously indicated for the work than we ourselves? At least, until we have tried this way of
converting souls, we have no right to say: “There’s nothing more I can do about it!”
It is true that there are specially chosen victim-souls whose prayers and sufferings do much to
bring down the showers of divine grace. And there are also the contemplative orders whose role in this
matter may be gauged from the words of Pius XI, when he urged the establishment of such communities
in the mission field, even though it meant immobilizing a number of urgently needed priests. He wrote to
the Carthusians: “It is easy to understand how they who arduously fulfill the duty of prayer and penance
contribute much more to the increase of the Church and the welfare of mankind than those who labor in
the tilling of the Master’s field. For unless the former drew down from heaven a shower of divine graces
to water the field that is being tilled, the evangelical laborers would indeed reap from their toil a more
scanty crop.” (Apost. Const. Umbratilem, A.A.S. 15.10.24). It is not in order to glorify the contemplative
religious at the expense of the diocesan clergy that we invoke this principle here. Quite the contrary, in
fact! We quote it, first of all, to warn the diocesan priest that if he does not make the interior work of
prayer and penance the mainspring of his apostolic labors, he runs the risk of finding that most of the
merit for his successes has been appropriated by somebody else.
But we wish to go further. It is our view that the diocesan priest, should combine together in his
own life, the functions of both the active life and the contemplative life. He should stand out above the
members of the religious orders as the whole above the part, summing up and including in his own life,
as Christ did, the life and activities of each and all. It is indeed a high vocation. But the priesthood should
be the highest of all vocations. By his office the priest is called on to be perfect; the religious, as such, is
only called to tend to perfection. And where there is a divine call, there is also the necessary divine
grace. Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat. There is yet another point of view. We all know how
difficult it is to maintain an intimate friendship with one whose outlook, on matters of principle, is
different from our own. Indeed we have often used this argument to dissuade the faithful from mixed
marriages; for if the two parties go their separate ways on Sunday, if their standards of conduct are at
variance, if their motives for action and their views of their final destiny are different, they can never
truly share one another’s life. Even easy unforced conversation is almost impossible — there are so many
topics that must not be mentioned.
Now the priest is the chosen friend of Jesus, and his life must be one of intimate friendship with
Him and a complete sharing of His life and work. But the whole life of Christ is characterized by the
Cross. Self-indulgence never ruled a single moment of it. Now, how can a man who rejects the Cross and
who will not hear of any interference with his self-indulgence, live and work in intimate friendship with
Jesus? It is quite impossible! And we have Christ’s own warning about it. Such a priest is really in a
miserable position. He has all the obligations of the priesthood but few, if any, of its real joys. For, of
course, it is in that familiar friendship and constant companionship with the Master that a priest should
find his greatest solace and joy. The unmortified priest has none of that joy. It is even difficult for him to
look forward to the joys of heaven, for he can see them only by faith, and he must dim the light of his
faith if he is to remain blind to the lesson of the Cross. As a result he plunges into activity in search of
human applause and the satisfaction of achievement. But even if he is successful therein, the thrill soon
palls and he is forced to seek lower but more intoxicating joys to satisfy his needs and to deaden his
conscience. The danger and misery of his position are only too clear. So, thank God, is its remedy.
Much more could be said on this point, but there is no room for it here; yet we cannot leave the
subject of clerical mortification without a few words of warning. The safest mortifications are those
which others inflict upon us. The most dangerous are those which increase our pride. It is far healthier to
yield to a legitimate desire, admitting how unmortified we are, than to feed one’s self-love by the pride of
self-control. For the man who prides himself on not being like the rest of men is far from being truly
mortified. Quite the contrary! His very success in mortification of one sort has only resulted in a much
more objectionable self-indulgence of another sort. Physical mortification that coexists with temper,
“touchiness,” and impatience, is always open to suspicion. So also are the mortifications of the man who
chastises himself but will tolerate no inconvenience or discomfort caused by others, even when the
infliction is quite involuntary on their part. In the infliction of positive pain on one’s own self, and to a
lesser degree, in its endurance, great caution is necessary. Modern psychology has revealed to us the
possible motives and sources of such actions. Unusual or severe physical penances should never be
practiced without the advice and continual supervision of a competent director. At the first sign of
growing pride or impatience or obstinacy, they should be dropped.
The humble and patient acceptance of all that God’s will sends us is the best of all
mortifications. If we are truly mortified, we shall at least try to accept rudeness, derision, and contempt,
in a spirit of meekness. This is an aspect of mortification that is often overlooked. Finally we must view
mortification in its proper perspective. The writers of certain periods use terms of contempt and hatred
for the body and for self that seem somewhat exaggerated. Whether in doing so they are somewhat
influenced by traces of Jansenism we leave to more competent judges. To our mind the proper approach
to mortification is not so much in a spirit of hatred of self as of love of Christ.
We are members of Christ’s Mystical Body. We have received life from Him in Baptism. We
deny ourselves only to “assert” Him. We mortify our own self that He may the more freely and the more
fully live in us. Mortification, then, even from its most elementary stages, is a quest for, and a
development of, union with Christ. When one adds to it a spirit of reparation and tries to share in the
work of winning grace for souls, one is entering into a very close partnership with our Friend and Savior.
There are many joys in the spiritual life, but it would seem that the greatest of them all is the joy that is
found by generous acceptance of suffering and a prudent generosity in doing penance, for by that, one not
only follows Christ but even attains to the fellowship of His sufferings and tastes all the sweetness of
perfect friendship with Jesus.

DETACHMENT

THAT CALVINISTIC SPIRIT which sought material success as a sign of spiritual salvation still
survives in the English-speaking world as a tendency to regard wealth as a mark and a measure of
“respectability” and to despise poverty as a token of failure. Even Catholics are often found to be infected
with the outlook, and the clergy are not always free from the general infection. It is a charge constantly
leveled against the clergy by their enemies that they are avaricious: would to God that the charge were
always unfounded! Even in our time, there is truth in the following lament of the Council of Milan: “How
many priests there are, otherwise, good, modest, of upright life, given to study, exemplary, whom this
cursed penuriousness and avarice renders objects of hatred before God and man.
To appreciate the danger there is in this matter for all of us, let us consider the motives that may
lead to this tendency to avarice. The majority of those ordained priests in the English-speaking world
were, until the present generation, the offspring of families who had been reduced to beggary and
comparative ignorance by penal legislation and had been socially despised as a sort of “white trash.”
When emancipation came, they tried to fight their way back to “respectability” against many external
obstacles as well as a fearful interior inferiority complex. In a society where wealth and material success
was the criterion of social standing, it is no wonder that many Catholics pursued material gain with a zeal
and avidity that were somewhat inordinate. Many priests inherited this outlook and were unconsciously
animated by such a spirit after they were ordained. Their sense of inferiority made them seek to establish
themselves in “solid respectability” by the acquisition of a full purse. Such a policy almost seemed part
of their duty to their religion, their priesthood, and their family. This tendency finds further food in the
fact that many priests reached the altar only at the cost of considerable sacrifices by their immediate
relations. Their vocation involved not only a “lucrum cessans” for their relatives through the loss of a
son in whom they would find a financial and social asset, but also a considerable outlay. It is natural that
such men might feel constrained to do something to make up that loss, and so tend to seek riches. But
even if these causes are not operative in every case, there are others that may be. We all know the
tendency of the man with an inferiority complex to strive to compensate his low estimate of himself by
the acquisition of wealth, of property, or of remarkable things. Men tend to build themselves up in this
way by increasing their possessions. Closely connected with this outlook, is the desire to be a generous
host. Lavish hospitality is not always animated by sheer altruism; there is a strong strain of pride in it. It
may even be the result of a lack of moral courage which makes us afraid of not being as good as our
neighbor.
There are many other motives that can lead a priest to seek riches, but we can nearly always
trace back the beginnings of our inordinate desire for money to a desire to build ourself up. There is a
lack of true self-denial at the root of it. We are not living-up (or should one say, “dying-up?”) to the full
meaning of our sacrificial statement made by saying Mass. Unlike our Master, we have not “delivered
ourselves.” We want to increase whereas He must increase, we must decrease. But our pursuit of money
is not always for ourself; it is for our church, for this or that object in the parish, or perhaps for charity!
Perhaps it is! But perhaps it is also for ourself! The tendency towards “self-increase” can masquerade
under many such forms. When a pastor proudly shows people around “his” church, or tells of the
collection toward “his” fund for some special object, one cannot help wondering sometimes whether the
accent is not rather on the “his” than on the church. Let it be granted that parochial finance is always a
pressing problem and often calls for energetic action. Yet we must be careful that the pursuit for money
for the sake of our flock is not used as a subtle means of self-seeking and “self-development.” Because
there are so many motives which can lead a priest to pursue money, and so many ways in which he could
secretly, as it were, satisfy this passion, it is necessary that a priest should take up a very decisive attitude
in the matter — all the more so, since it is the one vice from which time does not deliver us. It rather
feeds upon the years. As St. Gregory says, “All vices wane as man ages except avarice alone, which
never ages.”
Life-long vigilance and decisive effort, therefore, are demanded if our ministry and our souls are
not to be ruined by a worship of the golden calf. In fact, even though priestly “penury” is not on a par
with priestly chastity, yet we would say that a priest should be just as definite and as watchful in
renouncing material gain and personal aggrandizement as he is in renouncing marriage. For the quest of
gold can ruin his ministry as well as his own soul. People will far more readily forgive other weaknesses
of human nature in a priest than this one. As the Council of Milan said, it makes a priest “hateful to God
and man.” And every-day experience proves it. One has only to hear the comments made on the attitude
adopted by some pastors in collecting their due contribution from their flock to realize how true it is.
And, in passing, might we utter a plea for some circumspection and Christian reserve on this point.
We grant the difficulty of keeping up the income of the parish clergy at its proper level, but surely
personal abuse of the unsatisfactory contributor is neither congruous nor Christian! Untold harm can be
done in this matter.
The whole question is of special urgency today, when there is a world-wide organization
attacking not merely the privileges of wealth but even the possession of property in any form, and when
that organization is animated by such a hatred of God and of God’s ministers that it will lose no chance
of exposing every real weakness and every real inconsistency, and will seek for every appearance of such
things as a pretext for slinging mud and as a help to make it stick. We, ourselves, may make distinctions
between counsels and precepts, between Apostolic times and the present day; the enemy will hardly be so
considerate. We must then take care “that our ministry be not blamed.”
It is true that a priest has not taken a vow of poverty. But he has been given a divine exhortation
and a divine assurance with regard to detachment from worldly goods. Be not solicitous. . . . Your Father
knoweth you have need of these things. Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and
all these things shall be added to you, (Matt. vi, 25-33). The important point here is not that we are to be
poor, but that we are not to be solicitous — we are not to seek after these things. St. Thomas gives us a
principle that may help, when he says that poverty is praise-worthy only in so far as it liberates us from
solicitude; so that quanto modus vivendi in paupertate minorem sollicitudinem exigit, tanto paupertas est
laudabilior, non autem quanto paupertas fuerit major, (Contra Gent. iii, 133).
 A priest needs money for the proper discharge of his functions. He must feed himself, he must
clothe himself decently, he must have a proper library, he must have sufficient recreation, he must have a
due measure of comfort. He must be sufficiently independent of the rich to be able to speak and act
freely; he must have a sufficient feeling of security to avoid the distraction of solicitude. But there is no
need that his radio set should be the very last word; there is no need that his car should be the latest or the
most expensive model; there is no need that his library should be famous for its first editions or that the
walls of his rooms should rival an art gallery. Even in the use of gold, there is a golden mean! The
fundamental reason for our tendency to pass beyond that mean is a lack of faith. That was the reproach
made by Our Lord to His disciples. Our mistake is that we will not trust Him. His promises are not good
enough for us. The opinion and the example of our fellow-men count too much with us. We feel we must
be able to buy all that we want. We must be as good as our neighbor. We must be beholden to no man.
We must make provision for every possible future eventuality. God’s promises, God’s providence, God
Himself, are not enough for us! That may seem rather strong, but when one considers the repeated and
explicit teaching of Our Lord and His own example, when one recalls all the criticism one hears of both
priests and religious on this point, such vigorous statements may be excused. After all, it really is our
faith that is wanting. If we really believed Our Lord, we should pray for our daily bread and leave all the
rest to Our Heavenly Father Who looks after the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, Who provides
for the just and the unjust, and Who knows we have need of all these things.
Another factor is our failure to live up to the sacrificial promises which we make to God every
morning by offering sacrifice. If we really mean all that the sacrifice of Christ offered in the Mass means,
then we should try to spend our lives in self-surrender to God. Like Christ we should continually try to
deliver ourselves — to empty ourselves. The quest of worldly wealth is hardly compatible with that self-
surrender. Even at the risk of seeming extreme, we would say that in some ways, a priest given to avarice
could hardly be in a worse position. There are worse vices — but they are humiliating ones. Greed,
however, hardens a man’s heart, closes his eyes to the things of the next world and to the supernatural,
and feeds his pride at the same time. To this is added a blindness that makes a cure still more difficult,
for the avid quest for gold is so much in harmony with the spirit of society and of the times that, so far
from being clearly wrong, it can even seem quite reasonable and praiseworthy. Yet it is utterly
incompatible with what Our Lord taught His Apostles. He set them the example of the Good Shepherd
who “giveth his life for his sheep”. . . But the hireling flieth because he is a hireling and bath no care for
his sheep, (John x, 13). That text alone would be sufficient condemnation of the pastor who seeks
personal gain in his ministry. But there are even stronger exhortations. Everyone of you that doth not
renounce all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple! (Luke, xiv, 34). Of course that very definite
principle must not be taken without the corresponding assurance: Everyone that bath left house or lands
for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold in this life, and shall possess life everlasting. (cf. Matt.
xix, 29). But the very fact that Our Lord has given us such a magnificent reassurance only makes our
renouncement all the more urgent. In regard to these statements of Our Lord’s, it might be well for us to
ask ourselves — for surely they were addressed to us priests before anyone else — do we really believe
what Our Lord says therein, and if we do, how can we say that we have faith if we are still solicitous?
Here then is matter for courageous consideration and for a practical decision. Not merely is the
health of our own soul involved, but the whole work of our ministry. For nothing so sterilizes our
ministry as avarice. It gives the lie to our preaching, since we ourselves contradict the whole burden of
the Gospel. How can a man known to be a worldling hope to persuade people to live for another world?
How can a man exhort his congregation to be generous to the poor and to the parish, if they know he
himself is so attached to his wealth? How can the poor and the afflicted accept exhortations to patience
and resignation from a man who dreads financial insufficiency and flies from all discomfort? Each one of
us will have to work out his own counter-attack on the enemy, but for all, the first point is detachment.
We must not be solicitous. The second point is to avoid being excessively well-off. It should be possible
for a priest, by comparing notes with his fellow clergy, to decide what is a reasonable income for a man
in his position. If he finds his income passing this figure, might we suggest that he appoint himself an
income-tax officer, and that he levy an excess profits tax by putting a heavy super-tax (50 per cent. would
not be too much!) on all that he receive above this agreed figure? The “tax” could be distributed in
parochial charity, or it would find a very fitting application in helping the education of students for the
priesthood. That is only a suggestion. But one cannot read the Gospel without realizing that something
positive must be done about our attitude to money. Blessed indeed is the man who hath not gone after
gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures, (cf. Eccles. xxxi, 8). Blessed is he indeed for only those
who have renounced all solicitude and cast their burden on the Lord, have really discovered how
wonderful is the providence of God. God is indeed the Father of the poor, and there is no limit to His
thoughtfulness and His solicitude for those who put all their hope in Him.
The ecstasies of the saints have all a common origin in a perception of the extraordinary fullness
of truth in the words: My God and My All! For one who puts his hope in money, Christ is not enough; but
for one who puts all his hope in Christ, Christ is indeed All. Blessed indeed is such a one, for the Father
of the poor Who knoweth he hath need of “all these things” will add them all unto him, rendering him a
hundredfold in this life and eternal life hereafter, manifesting to him, even now, the tremendous depth of
truth in the words: “God will provide.”!

CELIBACY

IT IS NOT EASY to treat in print of the problems connected with clerical celibacy. They are all
rather delicate, and may often depend upon the variations of personal temperament. But it is essential that
every priest should adopt the right and necessary outlook in this matter. If he regards himself as one who
is consecrated and offered up to God daily in his Mass, his spirit of sacrifice and renunciation will soon
produce that attitude required. A priest has renounced, definitely and permanently, a certain type of sense
pleasure obtained in marriage. In doing so he has renounced the satisfaction of what is one of the
strongest and most insidious of the human passions, and he lives in a world which seems almost expressly
organized to provoke that passion. Consequently no mere negative and passive attitude is sufficient. He
must at least look as far as his outer defenses. And above all he must never take his chastity for granted.
He dare not for a moment forget that he is a man — that the Roman collar has in no way removed the
inherited tendencies of the flesh — that there is nothing fire-proof or asbestos-like about the cassock. He
has declared war on an enemy whose strongest division is its fifth column already securely entrenched
within his own camp. But the priest has gone further. In addition to renouncing the satisfaction of his
passions, he has also renounced a much higher type of pleasure — the companionship, the sympathy, the
understanding, the romance, the consolation, which arise from loving and being loved in marriage. These
two things may be distinct, but they are closely connected; and it is because of failure to remember the
second renunciation and all that it implies, that more than one unfortunate man has fallen in regard to the
first one. In fact the really dangerous assaults on clerical chastity are usually quite indirect and our
defense policy must be planned with that in mind.
The first point of capital importance is: Never to take one’s chastity for granted. The man who
upon hearing of someone’s fall, exclaims “That could never happen to me!” is in proximate danger of a
catastrophe. There are men whose natural passions are weak and who do not experience any strong
temptation, but they are in the minority. Most men must pray daily to God with St. Augustine: Da mihi
castitatem — but, unlike him, they must add: Modo, Domine. And the Book of Wisdom tells us: As I
knew I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave it. . . . I went to the Lord and besought Him,
(Wisdom viii: 2 1). The sense of our weakness and our constant need for God’s help can be a foundation
of a most precious union with Jesus Christ, Who comes to save us. With St. Paul we can gain say:
Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis, ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi, (II. Cor. xii, 9). But our prayer
will not be sincere unless we do our own part. We must avoid those things which are for us a source of
danger. Custody of the eyes is an age-old prescription which has not lost its efficacy. But it must be used
with prudence. The real incitement to passion is not so much in the exterior object as it is in its real self
but as it is elaborated by the imagination. If the temptation comes from within, starting in the
imagination, the sight of the reality may destroy its glamor. So, too, when one has just caught a passing
and incomplete glance of some attractive object, a full and complete look may prevent the imagination
elaborating a picture of exaggerated glamour and seductive power. One priest, a religious, who had
frequently to meet women on committees, etc., found all such interviews a source of great trouble and
temptation. He sought advice on the matter, and was asked whether he looked at the women. “Of course
not — I keep my eyes cast down!” “Well, Father,” was the reply, “for the next two weeks take a
comprehensive look at each woman you speak to, and I’ll be responsible for any evil that may ensue!” In
a week the priest was cured. But custody of the eyes is essential; and men have only themselves to blame
if they imprudently feed their imagination on movies and magazine advertisements. There is need, too,
for interior mortification of the memory and of the imagination, which should be exercised even before
conscience warns one of sin.
Then there is the whole difficult question of our relations with women. Let us grant the
possibility that modern life and customs may render the safeguards found in many authors somewhat
extreme. Numquam solus cum sola, Sit senno brevis et durus, etc. For all that, more than one poor man
only realized their value and importance after his neglect of them had led to a crash. Still, there is room
for a prudent discretion in accepting the details of such safeguards. Exaggeration may defeat their
purpose by making even sound and necessary precautions seem ridiculous. If we recognize that any
friendship with a woman can be dangerous, we shall tend to be on our guard. Much, of course, depends
upon particular circumstances. Friends we have known intimately from boyhood cannot be classed quite
indiscriminately with those met after ordination. Very special circumstances excepted, a new intimate
friendship formed with a woman after ordination, should be regarded with great suspicion, if not for what
it already is, at least for what it may become. Human nature is human nature. Men and women have a
natural attraction for one another. They find in each other a natural complement, satisfying a need that
may sometimes be keenly felt. God himself told us that it is not good for man to be alone. Unless a priest
make God his Friend and Partner, human nature may become imperious in its demands. It is dangerous to
think that mental intimacy has no connection with physical intimacy. There is a coordination of mind and
body that even the Liturgy recognizes. Friendship may start in a common intellectual or cultural interest;
it may even begin on a very high spiritual plane. But it may not be easy to keep it within such limits.
There are various influences that may provoke its deterioration. Jealousy is one. Vanity is another. Even
curiosity may lead to trouble. A desire not be outdone by somebody else, an urge to show what one could
do if one really tried, an itch to know whether the other’s indifference is feigned or real — such feelings
have more than once led to disaster. Where a considerable degree of affection has arisen, there is a great
danger for one who has mistaken fastidiousness for chastity. For what formerly appeared nasty, now
presents itself in quite a new and alluring light and will only be avoided by a very definite virtue of real
chastity.
Sometimes the trouble begins in an attempt to give consolation. The principle that consolation
which cannot be given with mere words should not be given by a priest is quite sound, and should always
be followed even in bona-fide cases. But not all cases are quite bona-fide. In an age when “experience”
has tarnished the escutcheon of many men, there is something about clerical continency that may have an
appeal for women, even for women with ideals. This approach may be quite insidious and their real
motive may be quite unperceived even by themselves. To the less idealistic, the charm of forbidden fruit
may be an allure; and there is no end to the motives that make some women hunt for scalps, counting the
clerical scalp as a special trophy. It is not necessary to detail the catalogue. No priest who knows the
world can fail to see the need for perpetual vigilance. He has a special duty to avoid exciting desires that
cannot be satisfied, in others as well as in himself. One great safeguard in all these matters is absolute
candor with an understanding confessor who is not afraid or unable to say what he thinks. In particular,
let no man think he is a theologian in his own case when it comes to estimating the gravity of matter. It is
true that for those acquainted with the attitude of modern urban civilization, the judgments of some
theologians as to what is graviter excitans and what is not, may seem too strict. Yet an interested party
can become quite an adept at building up a probable opinion on the benign side. Soon one theologian
constitutes a sound probable opinion. Then mere obiter dicta are taken as general principles. Then new
rules of interpretation as to “what he really means” are evolved. The different sorts of delectatio are
sorted out with a nicety that is extreme; grave matter becomes light; light matter becomes an
imperfection; and soon all degrees of wrong are swept away by “excusing causes.” Only the experienced
confessor has any notion how a man can fool himself in this matter. That is why we so strongly urge
candor with a confessor. Of course, he must be an understanding one. Views that are too rigorous do
more harm than good. Their exaggeration is easily perceived, and because of it the whole opinion is
discarded instead of the part that is exaggerated. For similar reasons, exaggeration, too, in the
prescription of safeguards is also dangerous. But there was another reason behind our previous reference
to this point. To our mind it is essential from the very start that there must be no half-heartedness about a
priest’s renunciation in this matter. It must be wholehearted and complete. It must lead to a willing
acceptance of all its necessary consequences, and of all genuinely sound precautions. If those suggested
are too extreme or too extensive, one may begin to pick and choose just how far he will observe them,
and a beginning is made that may lead to a divided heart, to an incomplete renunciation and an
inadequate resolution that may have fatal results.
 There are many social activities and recreations that are at least imprudent — if not definitely
barred — for a man who has vowed celibacy. Here we would warn the man who finds himself a little sad
about these limitations to his activities to examine his resolution in their regard. Is it adequate? Is it
whole-hearted? Is it sincere? Does he keep to it even in his imaginings? If he forgets it in his reveries, he
may soon forget it in his real life. One great source of limitation to a priest’s conduct is the danger of
scandal. The opinion is widely held today among non-Catholics that continence is impossible, that the
sex appetite will satisfy itself one way or another, and so the modern critic tends to read into even the
most innocent actions of a priest, a significance in harmony with his views. It is true, the scandal of the
Pharisees can sometimes be despised. But the good name of the ministry has its claims, and the efficacy
of our apostolate must be preserved. There is just one other point. Alcoholism is not the only form of
escapism to which the nervous temperament may have recourse. There are mild forms of anxiety
neuroses, and other psychological conditions, that can occasion severe temptation of another sort. Mental
hygiene is of great importance for a priest — even for his virtue; and the service of a sound Catholic
psychiatrist should be sought at an early date if there is any tendency to trouble of this sort. In particular,
confessors and others who have to deal with such cases, should remember that they nearly all have the
origin in a more or less unconscious fear or anxiety. Harsh treatment or threats will only make things
worse. Kindness, sympathy, and encouragement are essential in all such cases. But in regard to those who
come to us for direction we should remember that it is a well-known fact that personal attachment often
lessens considerably a priest’s official powers of guidance. He does not seem to have the same grace for
his work. And there may be considerable truth in the frequently repeated observation that the bestowal of
inordinate affection by a priest on any person brings a blight that is almost a curse. But the real defense,
the proper policy, is a whole-hearted search for God and a complete union with Christ. True chastity must
find its support in a full and fervent interior life wherein Christ is all in all.

SELF-SACRIFICE

TRADIDIT SEMETIPSUM. This text could be taken as an excellent summing-up of the life and
death of Our Lord. It should, at least, be an ideal for the priest, and might well be taken as a constant
principle of all his actions and his sufferings and his submissions. And since it was by obedience even to
death that Christ delivered Himself, it is by a similar sacrifice of his own will that the priest must follow
Him. In previous chapters on humility, on chastity, on detachment from wealth, we have considered some
ways in which the ideal of self-”deliverance,” of self-sacrifice, can be realized. Under the head of
ambition we include all those tendencies to the building up of “self” that appear in so many forms: the
quest for self-development, for advancement, for a career, for renown, for popularity, for achievement.
The motives that lie at the root of such ambitions are many and varied. The pride of life is strong in all of
us. We must make the grade! The natural feeling of inferiority that resulted from our youthfulness makes
us seek an assurance of our mature value in successful work, and to this motive there is often added the
more morbid driving-power of an inferiority complex, born of a keenly felt resentment of our own
limitations. Society, too, by its example, its standards, its judgments, can cause us to adopt its own
outlook and to seek a success to which we can point, even if it be only in the privacy of our own
thoughts, with satisfaction and pride. Such urges can, of course, lead to energetic work in our ministry,
and that work, ex opere operato as it were, can be fruitful. But the fruit is not credited to us, and there is
a more excellent way of bearing fruit. And such motives of ambition may even destroy the fruitfulness of
our work, for one great danger of all such motives and principles of action is their inevitable tendency to
develop self-will and to interfere with our practice of obedience.
The man who is determined to seek a “successful” career feels it necessary to take his life into
his own hands and fashion it, with foresight and energy, to his purpose. Even if his position is such that
he must conform, externally, at least, to the orders of a superior, he still seeks himself and his own will in
that service. Even under a superior, there are various ways of getting oneself appointed and “ordered”
according to one’s own desires. A hint in the right place, a careful piece of flattery, skilful intrigue and
wire-pulling, can do much to that end. We can be “difficult” and unsatisfactory when set at an
undesirable task; we can make trouble and so force the hand of authority to put us where we want to be.
The technique is only too well exemplified in many branches of modern life. Now all such policies are
quite opposed to the spirit of priesthood, to the spirit of Christ. We swore obedience to the Bishop at our
ordination, and that obedience is something more than a mere avoidance of direct defiance. It is
something more, too, than a mere will to obey inside certain limits, outside which we are free to do what
we think is our real work and to determine our own activity. Obedience is rather a complete handing-over
of ourself, our faculties and our talents to him whom the Holy Ghost has appointed to rule the Church, to
be used as it shall seem good to him and to the Holy Ghost. Even though a Bishop be not inspired in
commanding, yet we are more than inspired in obeying. For by obeying, we “abide in Christ.” And by
abiding in Christ, we are made fruitful, quite independently of the nature of the work which we are
ordered to do. For our fruitfulness is supernatural, not natural. And there is no other way of bringing forth
supernatural fruit than by abiding in Christ by doing His will in charity.
It is quite true that such a life of complete subordination to the appointments and to the policy of
another — to say nothing of subordination to the demands of our fellow-men and the force of
circumstances — may destroy any hope of our using our best talents in the most successful manner. It
may, of course, mean for some men a life of external success, perhaps beyond their merits; but for others
— more able perhaps and more brilliant — it may mean a life of uncongenial tasks, performed with little
satisfaction and no renown, while their best powers wither for want of the waters of opportunity, and they
see someone else applauded for work that they know they themselves could do better. The preacher may
have to organize, the organizer may have to teach, the teacher may have to write, the writer may have to
serve the sick. Frustration can indeed be written large in the lives of those subject to authority.
To some extent at least such experiences will fall to the lot of every priest, and his eternal
destiny and that of many souls may depend on the way he re-acts to it. One can adopt “hedgehog tactics,”
becoming difficult and even defiant, in the hope of forcing a change. One can perform one’s set tasks
with a minimum of zeal and energy while devoting oneself to some other work of one’s own choice as
one’s real interest. One can even do worse, and in the spirit of defiance and revolt, plunge into an ever
deepening degradation of sin, throwing over the virtue of temperance in one or all of its branches. And
such policy is fatal, both for our own life and those of the others who depend on us. (We must never
forget that we are “fathers”; we have a family — 2,000, it has been said — depending on each of us for
bread). And one might say that a man who adopts such an attitude ceases in many ways to be a priest. For
every priest is taken from among men and is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he
may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins. And here is a man appointed to such a work by the vice-gerent
of the Holy Ghost — a man who rebels because he is thereby prevented from living in renown among
men, in the things that appertain to himself and to his own glory, refusing to offer up the sacrifice that
must be the interior core and principle of all gifts and sacrifices, namely, his own will. Here is a man, a
priest by ordination and therefore another Christ. Christ, however, did not His own will, but came to do
the will of the Father Who sent Him and emptied Himself taking the form of a servant, becoming
obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. This man, however, comes to the priesthood to do his
own will, not that of the Father Who sends him; he wants to develop himself, to avoid the death of
obedience — for it is a death — and to escape the degradation of the cross of failure. That is why we say
that such a man ceases to be a priest even though the indelible character is stamped on his soul.
These views may seem extreme. So they are. But the priesthood is an extreme thing. It is in fact
the fullness of that very extreme thing — participation in the Divine nature and incorporation in Christ —
which takes place at Baptism. And the reason why so many of us find something unreasonable and
unwelcome in this complete submission is because the view we take of our ordination as priests is not
extreme enough. If Baptism be a death to self and to Sin, and a resurrection to a complete newness of life
in Christ — what is the priesthood? Is there anything in common between the life of the man and the life
of the priest? Did not Our Lord say that unless a man deny himself and follow in his Master in a daily
crucifixion, a daily death, he cannot be His disciple? Those are extreme words, terribly extreme! Yet they
are spoken categorically by the lips of Infinite Truth. And they refer directly and expressly to us priests.
And if we are to put such extreme words into practice, no superficial fulfillment is sufficient. We must go
down to the root of our self; we must deny our self-will.
To cut short the discussion, let us remember that a priest is a branch of the vine. He must abide
in Christ, and Christ must abide in him. Note Our Lord’s word “abide.” It is not merely at peak points in
our ministry that He acts in us. He abides in us, and we must abide in Him. If we remember that every
single fruitful act of our lives, both personally as Christians and ministerially as priests, is the work of
grace, we shall realize that it is not only when we consecrate or absolve that Christ takes over our
faculties — so to speak. Due proportion being guarded, it may be said that in every act of our priestly
lives, the agent is as really Christ as it is when we say: “This is my Body,” “I absolve thee. .”, for it is
God who worketh in us both to will and accomplish.
If then the priest is so completely incorporated into Christ and endowed with the power, it is
clear that any pursuit of a career, or any attempt to exploit his own talents or his own personality, any
quest for renown or reward, is a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. Compared with the sublime
talent of Christ’s Spirit and Christ’s priesthood and Christ’s power that is given to the priest, even the
greatest intellect and the greatest of natural gifts are but straw. And the case is worse than ridiculous if
one’s claim to renown is based on one’s supernatural success — for that is robbery from God. We might
as well claim personal merit for the power to consecrate the Body of Christ as for any other act of our
ministry. What have we that we have not received? What have we that is ours? What have we that is not
Christ’s? We are Christ’s, and our life is hid with Him in God.
It is because we are so completely dependent upon Christ in our priesthood that obedience is so
important for the priest. Elsewhere we have tried to show that obedience is the law of the Christian’s life
in Christ, inasmuch as it makes us live as members according to the soul of the Mystical Body Who is the
Holy Spirit. If this is true of all members, how much more true is it of the priest? In fact, so far from
obedience being regarded as unavoidable difficulty in our work, an unpleasant limitation, an obstacle to
be overcome it should rather be sought and insisted upon as the essential means to the end that our work
may be done in Christ, that it may be fruitful, that it may be done by Christ Himself. If we wish to
develop and cultivate the life of Christ in us, it can only be done by acting according to the will of God as
manifested through the recognized channels, especially through the voice of authority, for this will of
God is the meat that is the food of Christ in our souls.
This consideration may help those whose zeal for success in their work, even when it is truly
apostolic, finds an apparent hindrance in obedience. Their best plans are turned down, their initiative is
checked, their work is hampered at every turn. It seems so odd! It is not personal success that they are
seeking, it is the good of souls. Yet the powers-that-be, seem to be blind to the situation! So much fruit to
be brought forth and gathered if only we could persuade the higher powers to say: “Go ahead, Father!”
Yes, but we must not forget that when Our Lord told us that abiding in Him is the one source of our
fruitfulness, He added the extraordinary warning that His Father, the husbandman, would prune the
branch so that it might bring forth more fruit! This pruning action is found in all those official limitations
to our activity and zeal. We must then be careful lest our zeal be the principle of its own frustration.
Much more could be written on the subject. It must here suffice to draw attention to Our Lord’s
example. His whole humanity was completely subordinated to the Holy Spirit; His human will
completely subject to the will of God. He emptied Himself, laying down all initiative, all use of His own
powers. He summed it up Himself: I am in the Father and the Father in Me. The words I speak to you I
speak not of Myself. But the Father who abideth in Me, He doth the works, (John XIV, 10). There is our
model. If the Son of God can so completely deny His own self, empty His own self, deliver His own self
— surely we must go and do likewise — surely we must go and die with Him! Actually, if only a priest
could summon up the courage to see his whole life as a priest as a “delivering of himself”; if he could see
each ‘phone call, each visit, each demand on his services or on his time, as an occasion to deliver
himself, he would be amazed could he but know the fruitfulness of his life! Unless the seed falling into
the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit, (John xii: 24, 25). Christ
gave life to the world by obedience unto the death of the Cross. We are other Christs. We are called
“Father”, we are placed to give life to souls. We can only do that by dying to ourselves daily, by
renouncing all our own will, by putting on Christ. “Let us go and die with Him.”

LAPSUS LINGUAE

TO DISCUSS THE use of speech in connection with the spiritual life would really need a whole
book. Any brief discussion of the subject must be inadequate, yet because it is so important, something
must be said of it here. The avoidance of all fault in speech calls for consummate perfection: does not St.
James say: If any man offend not in word, the same man is a perfect man, (James iii, 2)? But for us
priests, there is an urgent need of making earnest and continual efforts to tame our tongue, for otherwise
our speech will betray not only ourselves but also our ministry. In the first instance we must be
scrupulous in regard to truth. A lie is degrading in a layman; in a priest it would be contemptible. But
apart from direct lies, there are other ways of offending against the truth — there are exaggerations, there
are unwarranted evasions, there are cowardly silences; and against all these we must always be on our
guard. We represent God before the people as His ambassadors. We are the mouthpiece of Infinite Truth.
In this matter especially, noblesse oblige.
Still greater is the need for care in regard to charity and justice. Direct detraction or calumny, of
course, would be scandalous in the mouth of a priest; and only a hardened or passion-blind conscience
would fail to react quickly to even the beginning of such a sin. Indirect offences of this type, however,
are more easily overlooked. The tendency to repeat gossip or rumor for its “news” value, the expression
of unfair and unwarranted interpretation of his motives, or even the failure to defend or explain the
actions of another, are only some of the many ways in which we can offend indirectly. The inferiority
complex that is by no means unknown in the ranks of the clergy, often seeks compensation in some such
way. It has been said with great truth that no woman can talk about another woman without giving herself
away to those who know how to understand the significance of her comments. Something similar is true
of priests, and that is a consideration — though not one of a high order — which may help us to be
cautious. Discretion, of course, should be characteristic of a priest’s conversation, yet we all have not the
same gift of prudence.
On one point, however, we should be ruthless with ourselves, namely, in regard to keeping
absolutely secret all confidences entrusted to us. And it would be well to carry our determination in this
matter well beyond the boundary set by the strict obligation. It should, of course, be unnecessary to
mention the harm that can be done by repeating personal comments or criticisms made by others,
especially to the subject of such remarks, yet we priests sometimes forget the need for reserve in this
matter. Humor can be the salt of speech at times and may help to smooth many difficulties; but why must
so many of us find our fun in a comment that hurts someone else? Let an unfortunate assistant make
some blunder that any one of us could have made just as easily, and he becomes the target of many a
painful jest, which he is expected to take in quite good part. In point of actual fact, such comments, even
though they be jests, are really faults against charity. There is, however, a great and very important
difference between laughing at a man and laughing with him. The latter can be quite a charitable way of
covering up another’s blunder, but the ridicule involved in the former, takes its place with sarcasm and
harsh cynicism as outside the bounds of priestly conduct.
Clerical humor can also pass proper limits in its subjects. The impropriety that can sometimes be
associated with genuine humor is not exactly edifying on clerical lips. However, it would be well to
remember that sometimes such humor is a well-meant safety-valve for the thoughts that can obsess and
depress a man after a long spell of hearing confessions. It can also be a desperate defense against
temptations. The humor that tends to lessen reverence and regard for sacred things and functions is
something against which we should be on our guard. It is true that English-speaking folk tend to conceal
their feelings and their devotion by a casual flippancy and careless understatement; yet this has its
dangers when there is question of things to be known and appreciated only by faith. For example, a due
sense of the awful power and responsibility involved in giving absolution is always liable to be blunted
by manifold repetition; but if we are in the habit of speaking of our work as confessors in a jesting
manner, that very necessary sense could easily be lost altogether. There is a happy mean between a prim
pomposity and an irreverent indifference that should prevail even when speaking among ourselves. With
the laity of course, we must be still more circumspect.
In our contacts with the laity there is danger of another error involving not merely the matter of
reverence, but even of moral standards. It is true that we have excellent authority for the policy of being
“all things to all men,” and every priest should have a ready sympathy and understanding for the
weaknesses of human nature. But the priest must never go so far as even in appearance to identify
himself with the worldling. There are some priests who, in an honest endeavor to contact souls and lead
them to God, lay aside priestly reserve and adopt a manner of speech and behavior which seems to assert
that there is really no difference between the priest and citizen of the world. In his choice of words, of
stories, of amusement, in his “broadmindedness” — such a priest adopts the standards of sinful men. This
policy may arise from mistaken zeal, but it can also be the result of a desire for popularity, and it may
even spring from a dissatisfaction with the limitations of the clerical state. Whatever its motives, such
conduct is absolutely fatal. It may achieve popularity — it will never induce respect. And it will never
make the message which the priest is ordained to deliver, either popular or respected. It is really complete
treachery to one’s priesthood, and a very bad letting-down of one’s self. Quite different from that is the
attitude of the priest, who, while retaining his own standard and principles, can understand and
sympathize with the difficulties and weaknesses of the worldling and even see matters with his eyes. This
in fact should be the aim of every priest. But while doing so, he must never abandon his own position.
On the other hand, there is an affected “edification,” an artificial piety of speech and manner,
that was sometimes considered proper, but which to-day would only tend to repel souls and to render our
message suspect. Exaggerated “earnestness” and all such affectations are foreign to the people of to-day.
Sincerity is the characteristic key-note which the sublimity of our office and the outlook of to-day both
make essential in our speech. This sincerity will unconsciously arise from a true interior life and familiar
friendship with Christ. The fact that we share and maintain Christ’s own outlook does not make it
necessary for us to be “shocked” or to affect horror when we hear of the sins of men. The attitude of Our
Lord to the woman taken in adultery shows us quite a different example. The artificial reactions which
are too often to be seen, remind the shrewd observers of the man who “doth protest too much.” There
may be a personal motive producing them — one not entirely to our credit. Compensation for one’s own
failings is often the real mainspring of criticism. There are other failings in speech that it would be well
for the priest to avoid. Aggressiveness is always objectionable and seldom of any use. The priest who
always starts an argument, whose aim is rather to overthrow than to understand, to smash rather than to
sympathize, to force rather than to encourage, is not a good shepherd of souls. Gutting remarks, smart
answers, unfair arguments, are really opposed to charity as well as to sincerity. It is nearly always a
mistake to refuse to admit ignorance — at least if one tries to cover it up by bluff. There are questions
that only an expert can answer, difficulties that only a specialist can solve. We need not be afraid to
admit our own limitations, and the implication that Catholic theology is a wider subject than can be
crammed into the head of one ordinary man is by no means an ineffective argument. Facile, superficial
solutions, answering a difficulty by dodging it, can do great damage and lead to serious doubt.
If sincerity is essential for a priest in the use of his tongue, so also is kindness. Nothing was ever
lost by being kind and there are many souls whom nothing else but kindness will touch. Kindness is the
flower and fruit of charity, and a human counterpart of the divine mercy — which is over all the works of
God. It makes a man Christ-like, and what is more desirable in a priest than that? There is no great need
— and here there is no more space — to extend the catalogue of our failings in speech. The words we
have just mentioned, sincerity and kindness, sum up all that one’s speech should be, and they give us a
touchstone to detect its defects. What is needed here is some indication of a practical remedy and means
which one can use to mend one’s ways and to avoid further faults. As usual, our remedy is an attitude of
mind, and what we have to say here applies equally to many of the topics previously discussed in former
articles — such as, for example obedience. If the priest regards himself as a participator in Christ’s
Victimhood as well as in His Priesthood, if he offers himself up to God together with Christ the Victim in
his daily Mass, and if he endeavors to see in every incident of the day an opportunity for the performance
and fulfillment of that oblation, then all else will fall into line. The aim of the priest will be to immolate
himself and to accept each divinely-sent agent of immolation. All faults in speech can be traced to an
undue assertion of self. The priest must deliver himself, not assert himself. That may seem far-fetched
and unnecessary, but there is no other way of saving souls. That is how Christ saved the world and we
can only follow in His footsteps.
It is true a priest may have to assert his priesthood; then it is Christ he is asserting, not himself.
Then there need be no offence in his speech. But all harshness, all lying, all exaggeration, all injustice, all
uncharitableness, all criticism, all impatience, all idle gossip, is merely an attempt to put one’s self above
one’s fellows, to make ourselves something, to lower others if we only can raise ourselves, to attract
attention or admiration, to be feared if not loved. Self-denial — in the true sense of the word, which is the
literal sense — is the remedy for that, and self-denial is merely a negative and unnatural thing unless it
comes from “putting on” or Christ. In a word, the priest must live the Mass. He owes that to God, he
owes it to his flocks, he owes it to himself. There is no other way in which a priest can truly discharge
any of his sacerdotal obligations. Let us repeat it, a priest must be a victim; a priest, to be a true priest,
must live the Mass.

THE CONFESSOR
 THERE ARE VERY FEW works of the ministry of a priest in which he can do so much good
and so much harm as when hearing confessions. In all his works, a priest must be an alter Christ us, but
hardly ever more so than in the confessional. The Jews themselves in their enmity could not avoid true
testimony of the attitude of Christ to sinners: “This man receiveth sinners.” This should be the ideal and
the motto of every confessor. The qualifications which a priest needs to fulfil this office are many and
varied; but if there be any one qualification more urgently needed than the rest, it is that one which
makes a priest so Christ-like: the virtue of kindness. No one who approached Our Lord to ask His
forgiveness was ever received with anything but kindness. This kindness should be our characteristic as
confessors. Without it our work will be hampered in every way. The very efficacy of the Sacrament may
be frustrated through lack of the necessary dispositions in the penitent if we are not kind. On the other
hand kindness is the key to all men’s hearts. If anything can dispose the hardest of hearts, it is kindness.
Yet, unfortunately, kindness is not always evident in the attitude of many confessors. Some confessors
seem to regard the penitent as one who has offended themselves rather than their Divine Master. Others
seem to regard it as their chief function to upbraid and humiliate the sinner. And there are many other
reactions only too often found in confessors, which seem completely contrary to the example proposed by
Our Lord when He spoke of the Good Shepherd searching Out the lost sheep and laying it on His
shoulders to carry it home — rejoicing.
No one, however, who has sat in a stuffy confessional for any length of time can help having a
considerable sympathy for the extravagances of confessors. There are penitents who would try the
patience of an archangel. There are those who will do anything except speak up. Others are so reticent
and incomplete in their answers that numerous questions are necessary before the confessor can drag out
the information necessary to specify the sin. Others will insist on going into long details about venial
sins, and glide over matter far more serious. The continual strain to hear, to attend, to guard one’s replies,
is trying enough. But the circumstances of time and place are often far from propitious to patience. A
stuffy box in a stuffy church; street noises breaking in — or perhaps stopping — at the wrong moment;
the sometimes unavoidable necessity of getting through as quickly as possible; these and a hundred others
can make things very difficult. Fatigue, want of sleep, headache, bodily ills, depression, may add strength
to the other enemies of patience. And the wiles of the devil himself, who sees his prey being snatched out
of his grasp, cannot be left out of the reckoning. To deal with all these difficulties and to maintain
throughout an attitude of patient, calm kindness, a deep interior life is needed. Mere zeal for personal
success is not sufficient; such zeal may sometimes even defeat itself. Close union with Our Lord is what
He Himself laid down as the only necessary and sufficient condition for fruitful action. Without this
union with Christ, a man may succeed as a psychiatrist, or as a temporal counselor, but no matter how
well endowed by nature, he will never succeed as a true confessor — as a successful physician of souls.
We cannot too often insist on this principle. Divine union is the only way to achieve fruitful action. The
work of the ministry is a supernatural work: it can only be done supernaturally, by a supernatural agency.
Natural talents and equipment may play their part as disposing causes, but they must be used
supernaturally. Without this union with God — this supernatural ingrafting in the Vine — there can be no
fruit. If we do not abide in Him, we shall bear no fruit, we shall be cast forth, we shall wither in complete
sterility. It is of paramount importance to remember this in our work as confessors.
Kindness in our treatment must be seconded by kindness in our judgment. Our primary duty in
the confessional is to reconcile sinners with God. To do that we have to take cognizance of their offences.
Now a man is guilty before God for the sin as he saw it himself, not as it is described in the text books or
as it appears to the calm, considered judgment of a theologian. True, we have a duty of instruction where
there is error. But even with an instructed penitent, one must always keep in mind the effect of a vague
outlook, rather hard to define, that is shared with and borrowed from one’s neighbors. It is best described
as a weakened sense of sin. Theoretically one knows this action is sinful, a serious sin, still, in the
decision to perform the action, one’s views are unconsciously affected by the current outlook of one’s
fellows. “People, good people, do this; it can’t be so bad.” We do not intend to approve of this attitude; it
is of course to be deplored. But it is there; and it may give the confessor an excuse — or rather a reason
— for being lenient and indulgent in his judgment of the subjective guilt of the penitent. Readers of
Canon Keatinge will remember how he insisted on confessors going to the classical authors for
theological principles, but to the most recent and most lenient writers for their application, and how he
qualified even those applications by the lack of this sense of sin, nowadays so widespread, which should
make such a great difference in the outlook of the confessor to-day as compared with that of the
confessor of fifty years ago. The point can only be hinted at here. It is mentioned merely to indicate how
a confessor can, and we think should, modify the more harsh judgment of earlier writers whose days were
passed in places and times in which the sense of the malice of sin was strong and effective. We repeat,
the confessor has to deal with the sinner’s offence as the sinner sees it. Anything that interferes with his
judgment, interferes with his responsibility. It is of course true that one has to try to restore that sense of
sin. Sometime perhaps where the lack of it is peculiar to an individual, drastic tactics may succeed —
although we personally would not like to take the responsibility of using them. In the long run, they give
the penitent a wrong concept of Christ’s loving mercy. But where the outlook is widespread, such a
policy is fatal and really unjustified. The point is that a priest is a bridge or — if you prefer it — a bridge-
builder. He has to mediate between God and men. He has to reconcile this man to God. He gets God’s
teaching from his theological training, but he has to be prepared to enter into the views of this particular
individual sinner. He cannot merely dogmatize in a general way, blandly-or angrily, perhaps —
indifferent to the special views and difficulties of this particular penitent. He must use sympathy and
understanding, tact and kindness. He cannot expect the penitent to see his sins as a trained theologian
sees them when in the austere calm of his study. The penitent lives in a world of passion and prejudice, of
thoughtlessness and activity. He is surrounded by incitements to passion and to sin. He is carried away by
the rush of circumstances, the tempo of the times, the shrieking shallowness of modern thought. Granted
that one must help him to overcome all that, yet one must remember all that is there to be overcome. It
cannot be ignored or harshly rejected.
It is by their failure to make some attempt at seeing the penitent’s point of view that so many
confessors give the impression that the Church is unreasonable in her demands, that her burdens are
unbearable. Our Lord’s yoke is easy and His burden light. We blaspheme Him by making it otherwise.
Two things are necessary to avoid these faults. One is an understanding of our penitent’s outlook and
circumstances, or at least, a realization that we do not understand and a readiness to make allowances for
the effects of the un-understood factor. The other is a wider reading of moral theology than a single text
book affords. Nowhere is the “man of one book” so dangerous to souls as in the confessional.
How often do we meet a priest telling us: “But the book says — “semper est grave.” The book!
No one author can be dogmatic about anything but principles. Men differ and their circumstances differ;
and these differences often mean that the results of the application of theological principles to particular
cases will be different. At least, if we are probabilists, we should give the penitent the benefit of authors’
differences. One book cannot enable us to do that. It is essential that a confessor should bear in mind the
different views of some representative authors on current matters of conscience. It is further necessary
that he take into consideration the considerable changes that have taken place in customs and, as a
consequence, in the normal reactions of human emotions to incitement. We think, too, that confessors
should realize the widespread occurrence of nervous conditions — neuroses of various types — which
may sufficiently interfere with the psychological factors necessary for grave subjective sin. This is highly
important in dealing with habitual sinners. In fact, it is a point for the discussion of which a whole book
would be necessary. However, to show how extensive the effects of such conditions can be, let us quote
the words of the General Secretary of the Liverpool Area of the Discharged Prisoners’ Association: “80
per cent. of men and women sentenced to terms of imprisonment to-day are not completely responsible
for their anti-social activities by reason of varying degrees of mental deficiency. The other 20 per cent
alone can be justly accused of sin and crime,” (cf. Eng. Gath. Times: 29 Aug, 1947).
We have wandered somewhat outside the scope of this book which is concerned with the priest’s
spiritual life rather than his professional activity. But we have felt it necessary to discuss this particular
phase of his professional work, lest a sensitive conscience might dictate unnecessary strictness or rigor in
the confessional.
One other point is essential. There must be no professional jealousy or rivalry in regard to
penitents. Deliberately to seek popularity or personal success is dastardly in a confessor, for it interferes
immediately with his freedom of action and judgment in the sacred tribunal. Some priests, despite intense
spirituality, will have to bear the cross of lack of popularity as a confessor — often through no fault of
their own. By accepting this cross as Christ accepted His they can achieve untold fruit in souls. Some one
else may reap the harvest — they however have done the sowing of it. But these are exceptions. A deeply
spiritual man will nearly always be a successful confessor — for one cannot be truly spiritual unless one
abides in the Vine which is Christ; and that is the principle of success.
 HUMILITY

THE POWERS bestowed on every priest at ordination are beyond all calculation. The Holy
Ghost Himself is there given to us, together with an official claim upon His adequate assistance in every
work of our ministry. This claim is based not upon our own personal merit but upon the needs of the
moment. It is not destroyed by any weight of personal sin, for it is backed by the merits of Christ. What is
it then that so limits the harvest? Why are we so often powerless to convert souls? How is it that we have
not already achieved the wonders commensurate with our divine equipment?
One might reply by citing the example of Our Lord Himself, Whose labors among the Jews were
so obstructed by the hardness of their hearts and by their lack of faith. Yet the application of the time-
tried principle: “Blame yourself first!” will lead us to the discovery of a still greater obstacle to our
success. This is the want of humility. Let it be said quite bluntly, that, in practice, both for our own
sanctification and that of the souls in our charge, nothing is so essential for us priests as true humility. It
may even be said that if we have humility we have all that is necessary, for all else will be added on to
us. And if we have not humility, all else profits us nothing. These are strong statements; but they find
their justification in the words of the Scripture teaching us that God resists the proud and gives grace to
the humble, (cf. James, iv. 6). To appreciate properly the importance and the function of humility, we
must recall God’s purpose in creating the world. He created it and planned it and saved it and rules it and
acts on it and in it, for His own glory. And that glory is His own. He will not give it to another. He is the
Lord God!
And, in this life at least, it is by His mercy that He intends to be glorified. The glory of His
justice belongs rather to the next life. Now, mercy is the generosity of goodness when confronted with
misery. If we do not know and acknowledge our own misery, we cannot know and glorify the mercy of
God. Humility is a glad recognition of one’s misery and of God’s mercy. To it God gives grace, for we
have our Divine Master’s assurance that this poverty is our title to His mercy: Blessed are the poor in
spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. The whole secret of the spiritual life is summed up in that
promise. For us priests it is of vital importance that we understand this plan of Divine action, and that we
live by it and act by it. This is essentially true of our work in the care of souls. In his ministry the work of
the priest has something of the note of ex opere operato about it. He acts in persona Christi, (cf. Pius X,
Letter to Priests, 1908). He is another Christ. He has the merits of Christ and the power of God at his
disposal. He is working for the building up of the Mystical Body of Christ, and God’s paternal goodness
is always “in act”; so that the priest’s own personal unworthiness or incompetence should not interfere
with the Divine action on souls in which he is merely an instrument. But if he attributes it to his own
cleverness, his own merit, his own eloquence, then he prevents the fulfillment of the Divine plan — for
God resists him. God will not give His glory to another. Indeed He cannot do so without self-
contradiction, for He is the Lord God.
Pride makes us appropriate to ourselves the glory of all the good we have or we do, and is
therefore directly opposed to God’s action. That is true of all our actions, but especially true of apostolic
work. For every single advance in the supernatural life of any soul is the work of grace, and God alone is
the Author of grace. It was merited for souls by Christ on the Cross. It is poured forth on souls by the
Holy Ghost, whose instruments we are. It is a superhuman work, completely above our natural powers.
To presume that our cleverness in argument, our eloquence in preaching, our kindness in receiving
sinners, or learning, our zeal, our personality, our prayers — our self, in fact — are anything but
instruments in the hands of God, when it is a question of giving supernatural life or increasing it, is utter
folly and nonsense. That God designs to associate us with Himself in His work is but the favor of His
mercy. He has no need of any of us; any need there is in the matter, is our need of Him. If then by
choosing us to be priests, He “lets us in on the ground floor,” so to speak, in His marvelous work of His
mercy, surely we have more reason than anyone else to realize how gratuitous it is! What have we that
we have not received? Here again, St. Paul is our model: Power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly,
therefore, will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me, (II Cor., xii: 9) God
forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, (Gal., vi: 14). If we priests could
only realize something of the infinite Fatherliness of God, of His natural urge to communicate Himself to
souls — for bonum est sui diffusivum, and He is Bonum Infinitum; if we could only realize something of
the infinite merits of Christ which are communicated to each soul at Baptism as if that soul itself had
suffered and died as Our Lord did, (cf. St. Thomas, 3, 69, 2); if we could only remember that we are the
instruments of Infinite Love, Who is the Holy Ghost, — there would be no limit to the confidence with
which we approach our work for souls. Our own weakness would only be a new motive for confidence,
for the weaker we are, the less likely is our co-operation in the work to take away from God’s glory. And
this glory is the motive of all His action! St. Paul sums it all up for us: For see your vocation, brethren . . .
the foolish things of the world hath God chosen that He may confound the wise; the weak things of the
world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world, and the
things that are contemptible, hath God chosen and the things that are not, that He might bring to naught
the things that are: that no flesh should glory in His sight. But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, Who of
God is made unto us wisdom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption; that as it is written, He that
glorieth, may glory in the Lord, (I Cor. i. 26-31).
The need for humility also becomes evident from another point of view. Our own personal
attitude to God, as we have seen in previous chapters, is expressed by offering sacrifice. By sacrifice we
profess and acknowledge God’s sovereign dominion over us, and our complete dependence upon Him.
This, of course, would be true of any sacrifice. But the sacrifice we offer is the sacrifice of Christ,
sacramentally renewed in the Mass. In doing so, we identify ourselves with Christ in His death — are we
not baptized into His death? — and His death is but the complete sacrificial summing up of His whole
life. To identify ourselves with Him in our life, we must be like Him meek and humble of heart, we must
empty ourself for He emptied Himself . . . becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross.
There is no better way of rendering God the worship we owe Him as creatures, of fulfilling the
assertion we make to Him by sacrifice, of conforming ourselves to the image of His Son Whose sacrifice
we offer as our own, than by the practice of humility. It is the true interior sacrifice of praise; it alone
gives God due honor and glory. For pride attributes to ourself all the good we do or have; humility
attributes all to God. Humility alone can truly say to God: Thine O Lord is magnificence, and power, and
glory and victory: and to Thee is praise, (I Par. xxix. 1).
This continual willingness to refer all we have or do to God links up our humility with our Mass,
and with God’s First Commandment. Reverence, according to St. Thomas, is the root of humility:
Principium et radix humilitatis est reverentia quam quis habet ad Deum. Humilitas causatur ex
reverentia divina . . . Humilitas proprie respicit reverentiam qua homo Deo subjicitur , (2, 2: 161; 1, 4, 5,
6). And this is but an echo of the foundation of St. Benedict’s spiritual teaching. We tend to overlook the
duty of direct devotion to God and His Glory. This duty is best fulfilled by humility, for such an habitual
attitude of our soul can make our whole life a continual sacrifice of praise.
True humility is always accompanied by boundless confidence. Pride sees in our own self with
its apparent excellence, our claim on God’s co-operation, and on God’s rewards; but even pride must
admit that the very basis of such a claim sets a limit to it. Humility bases its confidence on personal
poverty of spirit, and on the infinite mercy of God; it takes its stand on the merits of Christ, knowing that
then nothing will be wanting to us in any grace. The Queen of Prophets has foretold it all to us . Dispersit
superbos mente cordis sui . . . exaltavit humiles Esurientes implevit bonis, divites dimisit manes , (Luke.
51-53). Let us repeat it again: Deus superbis resistit; humilibus autem dat gratiam.
If humility, then, is so important for our service of God, for our sanctification, and for the
salvation of others, how are we to acquire it? How are we to practice it? The full answer to that would
require a complete treatise on the spiritual life — for the perfection of humility, in practice, coincides
with the perfection of holiness. As a starting point, the obvious thing is to learn humility from our Divine
Master and Model. We must develop our knowledge of Him by reading, by reflection, and by personal
contact in prayer. It is impossible to be His friend, to talk to Him daily with any degree of sincerity, and
not grow in humility.
Then, we must ask for the grace of humility in sincere and earnest prayer, basing our requests on
the merits of Christ, and His zeal for the glory of God. To petition we should add prayerful consideration
of the nature of God and His perfections. In fact, the rational basis for humility can be found in the tracts
De Deo Uno and De Deo Creatore et Conservatore. Even the metaphysics of first and second causes can
be of great help to the philosophically-minded. Therein one sees that it is not mere sentimental piety that
talks of our “complete dependence of God in all we are or have or do.”
In addition, we must try to accept humiliations when they come to us, and to be determined in
checking the conscious manifestations of pride. Self-exaltation, even in our thoughts, must be avoided;
so, also, must all referring, in thought, or word, of our success, to our own excellence or skill. That does
not mean that we have to deny the good or talents that are in us. Quite the contrary — for humility is
truth. But while recognizing our assets, we must remember that they are only on loan. They came from
God and they are for God.
The Magnificat is full of lessons in true humility. Our Lady knew that She was the most
wonderful work of God’s hands apart from the human nature of His Son. Yet She was the humblest of
God’s creatures. She knew and admitted that it was God Who made Her great — and that it was in His
mercy that He did so. It is God also Who can make us truly humble. It would seem that the higher
degrees of humility are the result of a special grace; prayer, then, is the way to obtain the perfection of
humility, but our prayer is not sincere if we do not at the same time make a very reasonable effort to
combat our own pride and prepare the soil of our soul for the Divine sowing.
It is not easy to come to an end when treating of humility. Much must be left unsaid in a short
chapter. But one hint cannot be omitted. Competition is nearly always the work of pride; so also is every
search for something to distinguish us from our fellows or to set us above them. Even mortification, even
holiness, can be pursued through pride. We must be continually on our guard and constant in our prayer
against illusions. The peace and confidence of the truly humble man are beyond all telling. He need no
more be afraid of the “other fellow’s” success; he need never again fear to admit his own failings; he
need never again be restless and anxious about his own dignity and value. His hope and help is in the
name of the Lord — which is “Savior.” His confidence is based on his own misery and God’s mercy. His
union with God is the fruit of his own nothingness and his own need. Gladly does he glory in his
infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in him. Again we may repeat it: Humilibus autem Deus dat
gratiam.

OUR DAILY TIME-TABLE

BEFORE WE CONSIDER the question of the personal devotion to Our Lord and to His Mother
which should be the foundation of a priest’s spiritual life, we feel bound to point out the great need that
each priest has for some rule of life. If the planning of our day is left to the caprice of the moment it is
likely that we shall be like fallen leaves at the mercy of every little breeze of momentary interest or
passing whim, circling around in some corner, getting nowhere. Even though we be men with a strong
sense of duty, determined to overcome our caprices and to live each day in accordance with our ideals,
yet, faced with an almost unbroken series of decisions to be made, we shall either waste all our energy in
making these decisions instead of in carrying them out, or else we shall fail to decide and shall never
succeed in devoting all our energies to any one particular task. There are so many duties crying out for
attention, that any one of them can only be done properly by deciding to close our ears to the claims of
the others. Our very sense of duty and the urgency of our many obligations may even paralyze our power
of decision and inhibit or sadly mar our power of acting. One cannot pray if one feels one should really
be visiting the sick, and one cannot give one’s whole attention to a caller if one is listening to the clamor
of the unprepared sermon. It is true that it would be impossible to draw up in advance a complete plan for
each day; some things depend completely on circumstances. Yet there are a number of decisions that can
and should be made once and for all, and there are many things which will not be done if some regular
time is not set apart for doing them.
On the other hand, there is a tremendous help to be got from routine. Every man who has
marched in step with his fellowmen knows how the steady swing of the group can carry a man on, far
beyond the limits of his normal powers. Even when walking alone, a constant, regular pace can lend a
man extra strength and extra endurance, whereas, if we have to break step or to change rhythm too
frequently, we are soon fatigued. It is the starting and the stopping that use up power. The same principle
must be applied to our life as priests. We can easily see for ourselves what a wonderful asset a regular
habit of doing things can be. Just think what it would mean in a few years if, for example, we read the
Bible for even five minutes before dinner every day. And, to repeat, we may be quite certain that there
are many things in a priest’s life which, if they are not done by making them the object of a regular habit
and routine, will never be done at all. There must, then, be some rule of life; that is beyond argument. It
is quite another matter when we ask what that rule is to be. Here the present writer, a monk, is more than
usually unfitted to prescribe. Yet there are some things upon which we may all argue and reach a working
agreement. The first thing, to our mind, is to fix the hour of going to bed. Admittedly this may depend
upon the time appointed for our morning Mass — which may be variable. Yet the time for going to bed
should be fixed so as to give us say, seven hours of sleep. We say seven hours; but each man will have to
decide for himself whether he needs more or less. If he needs more, let him be sure to see that he gets it
by fixing a suitable time to retire. Otherwise he will find himself taking the necessary additional ration
during his prayers or elsewhere when on duty. Then we have to fix the time for getting up. Promptness in
rising at the appointed time is a most important mortification in the life of a priest. It can have far-
reaching consequences. It is not altogether unconnected with our promptness in repelling temptations. A
stolen few minutes more in bed may have to be paid for very dearly.
The hour of rising must be chosen so as to leave us sufficient time to be ready for Mass. What
being ready for Mass means will depend to some extent upon personal outlook. It certainly means more
than being washed, clothed, and shaved. Some prayer is essential. Here we are faced with the vexed
question of where in our time-table we are going to put our mental prayer. Many authorities insist the
mental prayer should be made in the morning before Mass. There are many advantages to be gained by
following their advice and certainly their view cannot be set aside without good reason. But for our own
part, we must admit that if a particular priest finds great difficulty in making his prayer in the morning
and is able and willing to perform it in the evening, we would be prepared to sanction his proposal, if
only for no other reason than that he is more likely to persevere in the practice under more congenial
conditions. Men’s mental habits differ. For some men, it will be certainly much easier to pray in the
evening. In their case, however, we would strongly advise a short time of private prayer early in the
morning before Mass, and we would insist upon some other form of prayer, either the Rosary or part of
the Divine Office, for example, or else at least some spiritual reading. We take it for granted that the
priest has anticipated Matins and Lauds; Prime then, at least, could be said before Mass. For the rest of
the Office it is not easy to prescribe. But some special time should be set apart for Vespers and Compline,
and also for Matins and Lauds.
So much depends upon a man’s daily duties, that it is impossible to prescribe a detailed time-
table. There is a great deal to be said for getting in some reading somewhere in the morning, if one’s
duties allow of it. In fact, for the man who makes his mental prayer in the evening, spiritual reading is
necessary in the morning, if not before Mass, at least after breakfast. It will help him to supernaturalize
his day; it will give him food for thought in his spare moments, and it will, generally speaking, orient his
day towards God. Canon Keatinge in his excellent work The Priest, His Character, and His Work, makes
a capital proposal to each priest. He asks him to give God two hours before breakfast. He visualizes those
two hours in this way: the first for meditation and Mass, the second for thanksgiving and the Divine
Office. Without insisting upon this particular arrangement, we would earnestly urge this proposal of two
hours for God before breakfast, on all priests. Certainly a man who is faithful to such a practice will
never go far wrong. Admittedly, it is a fairly high standard; but there is no room for mediocrity in the
priesthood. Mediocrity is only the beginning of laxity and is, therefore, fatal for the priest. We must
never forget what God told St. John to write to one of His priests: “Because thou art lukewarm and
neither cold nor hot We know the rest. It is perhaps the most awful thing God ever said to man. The same
Canon Keatinge asks for something more, and adding our plea to his we beg the priest to pass as much of
those two hours as he can in his church. It is extraordinary how easy it is — and how common — for a
priest to get out of the habit of using the church for his private devotions. The habit is well worth forming
and following.
There is another point which we owe to Canon Keatinge. He suggests that the two hours after
breakfast are “the hours most easily frittered away, if not entirely wasted.” Experience will have taught
most of us how true it is. There are, of course, many priests who find that these hours are full of work;
but if we are not one of their number, it would be well to examine our conscience and ask ourselves what
use we make of those hours after breakfast. The rest of the day must be planned in accordance with one’s
duties. If we stop to think of all the things that have to be fitted in to our time-table, we shall feel like a
man whose room is littered with various articles — each essential — to be packed, and who is wondering
how all that mighty multitude is to be fitted into one small valise. Yet luggage has been packed
satisfactorily and successfully, and time-tables can be managed without any greater difficulty. Some
experience by trial and error may be necessary before we achieve the right result.
The first difficulty of making a time-table having been overcome, the second difficulty — that
of keeping to it — has to be faced. And in practice, one must at the same time face the third difficulty in
this matter — that of departing from one’s time-table. In regard to keeping to it, there are certain
elements of it, especially those related to our spiritual exercises, about which we must be absolutely
obstinate. There is no other word for it! Only obstinacy and grim determination will keep a man to the
daily practice of prayer and of spiritual reading; and the chaff and banter, and the not-impossible ridicule
of our clerical brethren, will soon make us depart from many other points of our plan, if we are not
doggedly — aye, mulishly, obstinate. Yet combined with that obstinacy, there must be prudence and
liberty of spirit. There are demands of duty — sudden sick-calls — and claims of charity against which
no rule of life may be allowed to prevail. Obstinacy under such circumstances ceases to be a supernatural
virtue and can easily become a natural vice. Self-love refuses to alter its own plans for anyone else.
Liberty of spirit is always ready for a departure from our rule in order to serve our neighbor, even if it
may be to put up with an unwelcome visitor, for here we also give ourself to Christ in His members. All a
priest’s life consists in giving himself to God, either in direct service through Christ or else in indirect
service to the members of Christ. This view of our ministry is most important. Impatience, touchiness,
grumbling at the demands of our flock, are all quite incompatible with this devotion to the whole Christ.
So also is self-will, even when it wants to carry out its own rule of life despite the lawful demand of
Christ’s members. Perhaps it would help if we said that our rule of life is a program of the service of
Christ, which may only be set aside to serve Christ in some other way, but which must always be set
aside when Christ clearly asks us for service elsewhere.
To take but one example of the ambivalence that can be evident in this matter. Most priests will
only persevere in clerical studies by fixing some time for that purpose and forcing themselves to keep to
it. They will have to be quite obstinate about it. Yet there are men who can get so wrapped up in their
studies that all interruptions are most distasteful and they get quite annoyed if anyone makes any claim
— however just or urgent — on their services that would interfere with their work. Either way, there is
need for obstinate devotion to Christ; both in perfecting oneself as His member in the priesthood and in
serving our neighbor as a member of the Mystical Body. A priest must belong completely to Christ and
be ready to give himself always.
Not only must our program for the day be arranged, but also that for our week. There is a sermon
to be prepared, possibly more than one. It is essential that some day be set apart for that, preferably early
in the week. We are not here discussing how sermons should be prepared; our own views on that question
are not quite conventional, but we all agree that they must be prepared somehow, and most of us know
that that will not be done unless we have pre-arranged a day and a date for the purpose. Saturday is
definitely not the day. And the priest who always preaches extempore, no matter how “successful,” will
have a lot to answer for. If he can preach a good sermon on the spur of the moment, he can preach a
better one, and a much more effective one, after making some proper preparation. Such a methodical
planning of our day and our week may seem burdensome. It might even seem to be harmful by repressing
a certain spontaneous activity that can be so energetic. Yet appearances in that case are deceitful.
“Spasmodic sprints” in a long-distance race will soon put an end to any hope of finishing the course in
good time. The steady pace is what breaks the record. This is just as true of our clerical life. A priest has
so many things to do that he could do none of them with the easy mind and the undivided attention that
each of them needs if he had to be continually worrying about the others. The only way is to make our
decision once and for all, giving all or each duty its due time, and then ceasing to worry about it. Age
quod agis! This is true of mere natural efficiency. It is much more true of our supernatural life. It is
difficult enough to devote all one’s energies to any task and still be recollected in and with God; but it
would be impossible to do so if we were needlessly uncertain as to what we really should be doing at this
particular moment. A time-table properly arranged will facilitate not only our work but also our union
with God — and this latter is the one and only principle of all supernatural fruitfulness.

PREACHING

THERE IS STILL one point in the priest’s work which we must consider before going on to his
interior life with Christ. It is his preaching. We are not here concerned with the technical aspect of
preaching, but rather with its relations with a priest’s spiritual life. Cardinal Manning in The Eternal
Priesthood has a chapter on the subject well worth reading. There he indicates one most important point.
Preparation is required for preaching, and the most important preparation is not the preparation of the
sermon, but the preparation of the man. “The man (it is who) preaches, not the sermon, and the sermon is
as the man is. And he adds another consideration that is as significant. Some men in preaching depend on
their memory; either the memory of what they have written out, or else of what they have read and
copied from others. The real preacher is one who thinks, and who speaks out of the fullness of his present
consciousness. If we are remembering, we must stop thinking; if we are thinking, memory is suspended.
If we are thinkers, we must think words, and words will come to express our thoughts. If our minds were
full of the things of God and His Kingdom; if we realized them and lived in them as the conviction of our
reason and the affection of our hearts, to speak of them would be a relief. And the Cardinal assures us: “it
is the desire to be eloquent and to shine as orators that causes unreality, vain glory, and emptiness. If we
could forget ourselves and speak seriously for God, we should find less difficulty in preaching, and the
people would hear us gladly, because they would believe that we mean what we say. They are quick to
perceive, it may be said, to feel, whether a priest speaks from his heart or only from his lips!” We should
like to quote the Cardinal at length: space, however, is wanting. We can only appeal to each priest’s own
experience to confirm the truth of the Cardinal’s observations. And once the truth is admitted, namely,
that the preparation of the man is far more important than the preparation of the sermon, it will, we hope,
become clear that none of the time which we have been asking the busy priest to devote to the exercises
of the interior life is wasted, even from the point of view of his active ministry.
To avoid misunderstanding let it be clearly stated that we do not at all hold the opinion that
sermons should not be prepared. Quite the contrary. No matter how well the man himself is prepared, he
must be diligent in deciding how to express his message. He must choose his words, he must order his
thoughts, he must review his texts. Whether that is to be done by writing out the whole sermon or not is
another matter. Personally we would prefer to see the framework planned and then to have the preacher
preach his sermon to himself; say, while going for a walk. In this way he can choose his words and censor
his thoughts. Such a preparation does not take away the bloom of freshness or destroy the sincerity of
spontaneous utterance which are so important in a sermon. However, all that is rather outside our present
scope. The point is that the preacher needs to be a man of interior life, a spiritual man, one who has
cultivated the interior virtues. And, further, he must be diligent in exercising these virtues, especially
when in the pulpit. There must be a complete subordination of the natural to the supernatural, of
ornament to function, of the man to Christ. Interior mortification and humility are essential. Pulpit
oratory can easily be an empty art, a pagan vanity. It can please the ear without disturbing the
conscience. It can stir up emotions without touching the will. Even at its best, it is merely natural; of
itself, it can produce no supernatural effect. Is it too much to say that much of pulpit oratory can be a vice
in a priest?
It is true that reverence for God and for His service obliges us to do all things well. And in
preaching, charity towards our congregation will lead us to make our sermon as attractive as possible. Yet
we must never rely on any mere natural accomplishment to produce a supernatural effect. The turning of
souls to God is the work of grace, and although we have the grace of state when preaching — a point no
priest should ever forget — yet of all the graces, those gratis datae are the least susceptible of personal
appropriation. They are lent to us by God, for the congregation, through the merits of some one else. It is
sheer pride and robbery to claim them as our own — to put our own signature to the work a sermon
accomplishes. And we know that God resists the proud. Humility in the preacher we repeat, is essential.
In administering the Sacraments, no priest would be crazy enough to claim for himself the credit of the
effect produced. Even though he absolves sin in the first person singular, he realizes that the power, the
credit, and the glory belong unalienably to God. His own contribution is something that comes from his
priesthood rather than from his own personal talent. The absolution of any other priest, duly appointed,
would be equally efficacious. In preaching, however, the relative insignificance of the human
contribution to the final result is by no means so obvious. In preaching there is certainly far more room
for self-congratulation, for preening oneself in the rays of popular admiration, for putting one’s own
signature to the work of God’s hands. This may be mere folly and thoughtless vanity; even so, it is bad
enough; but if it be true pride, then it is fatal, for it is written “God resists the proud.”
Humility, however, draws down grace, and the humble preacher, conscious and patient of his
shortcomings, can always rely on God to come to his aid, not indeed to make him famous, but to convert
souls by his own infirmities. “To the humble, God giveth grace.” Internal mortification is necessary.
There are men who enjoy saying a thing well so much that one can almost hear them rolling the words
around in their mouth and savoring them. There are men who are so full of themselves that they preach
themselves, not Christ. There are men who have pet hobbies and will preach nothing else. There are men
who will do all they can to avoid preaching unless the circumstances are such that they will shine.
Preaching, like politics, is very often the science of the second-best. For a man will often have to treat a
subject which is uncongenial, under conditions which handicap him, without the time for proper
preparation. Then he must glory in his infirmities, especially when they are made manifest.
Self-denial, in a very literal sense, is another essential virtue for the preacher. He must be careful
that neither he nor his sermon comes between his hearers and the end to which he would lead them. He
must build a bridge between men and God — not a barrier. All his art, all his talents, his oratory, his
style, his learning, must be unobtrusive and completely subordinated to the purpose of the sermon —
which is to preach Christ. A priest in the pulpit should always strive to follow Our Lord’s example by
putting himself completely in the hands of the Holy Spirit. To do that, he may often have to sacrifice very
much that is dear to him: self-satisfaction, natural “success,” his reputation and renown; but this is his
vocation. He is a priest; and the office of priest implies sacrifice. Our Lord Himself warns us that self-
denial must be characteristic of His disciples. The interior life of the priest, so necessary for fruitful
action, will manifest itself in his sermons by a certain simplicity and sincerity. It is true that there are
occasions which call for a more elaborate eloquence than usual; but even then, the sermon should be born
rather of the occasion than of the personal prowess of the preacher. The effect of this genuine spirituality
may be noticed in another way also — in the sincere sympathy which adapts itself readily to the different
varieties of human temperament to whom a priest must preach. True charity will adapt the sermon to the
needs of the congregation without any of that patronizing condescension that sometimes marks the efforts
of a speaker to come down to the level of his audience, or of that obvious obsequiousness which lay
orators sometimes employ to flatter their listeners.
In another way, too, union with God will affect the sermon. It is true a preacher may have to
rebuke and to condemn sin; even Our Lord Himself denounced the Pharisees very directly and very
drastically. Would it be too much to suggest that there are too many priests who seem to model the style
of all their sermons on that one particular example? One wonders what fruit they reap. Certainly, there is
danger that they may do more harm than good. Denounce sin — by all means — but as to the sinner —
well, it is written: “This man receiveth sinners.” It is a peculiar thing about holiness, that it begets and
displays a wonderful sympathy for sinners. It is almost, as it were, a case of extremes meeting. The holier
a priest is, the more a sinner feels at his ease with him. One might almost speak of a “fellow feeling.”
Certainly, sympathy for sinners, even for great sinners, should be characteristic of Christian preaching.
Much more could be written on this subject, but it lies on the border of our purpose in these chapters,
which is rather the personal spirituality of the priest, and we have gone to our limits. The just man lives
by faith. So also, the Christ-preacher preaches by faith. He believes in the Holy Spirit and in the action of
His grace on the souls of the hearers. It is curious that it is often the least important, and the least
satisfactory part of the sermon that actually brings grace to souls. Ultimately we must rely on the grace of
our priesthood. It will work, not so much by giving us eloquence, as by giving our hearers illumination.
Let us serve God by trying to preach in a manner worthy of Him, but let us serve souls, by relying more
on God’s grace than on our own eloquence to bring them to God.

STUDIES

IN A FORMER CHAPTER, we pointed out that there were some things which a priest certainly
ought to do, but which he probably would not do unless he fixed a time for them in a planned program.
One of the most outstanding of these is clerical study. Even though in these chapters we are primarily
concerned with the spiritual life, yet we cannot omit a discussion of the duty of study, on account of its
manifold relations with both the priest’s apostolate and his own spiritual advancement. It may seem
unreasonable and impractical to suggest that a busy priest should, or even can, set aside a regular period
for study. His day is already overfull and there are many other things still clamoring to be done.
Nevertheless we insist that there is a duty incumbent on every priest to study and that this duty is an
urgent one, and in some ways especially urgent for the priest who is too busy to study. First of all let us
listen to the late Holy Father Pius XI. In his Encyclical on the Priesthood (1935) he insists “The priest
should have a full grasp of the Catholic teaching on faith and morals; he should know how to present it to
others, and he should be able to give the reasons for the dogmas, laws, and observances of the Church of
which he is a minister... Therefore, it is necessary that the priest, even among the absorbing tasks of his
charge, and even with a view to it, should continue his theological studies with unremitting zeal. The
knowledge acquired in the seminary is indeed a sufficient foundation with which to begin; but it must be
grasped more thoroughly, and perfectly by an ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of the sacred
sciences. Herein is the source of effective preaching and of influence over the souls of others .” These are
weighty words. They come from the Vicar of Christ. They are not mere rhetoric. They must be taken
literally. They are an apt commentary on Canon 129 of the Code. No priest dare set them aside as
inapplicable to his particular case.
It is true that there are certain examinations that have to be faced. One must prepare for them.
The less said about preparing for examinations the better. It is generally mere seasonal cramming,
leaving little permanent residue. It leaves us far from the “thorough grasp... the ever-increasing
knowledge and understanding,” of which the Pope speaks. It is true that most of us read some reviews,
but how many priests have ever even re-read the seminary course in dogma and moral after ordination?
How often does it happen that, when a priest is asked a question on moral theology, he glibly answers, as
the only opinion, what he was taught in the seminary, blandly and unjustly excluding another probable
view, which would often make a great difference to some of his penitents? There is no science where the
man of one book is such a public danger as in moral theology. Every priest has to hear confessions. He
has no right to deprive his penitents of the liberty that comes from lack of certain agreement among
theologians. And even if one book were enough, no man can understand one book, or realize all the
implications of an unobtrusive adjective or qualifying phrase, if he has read no other book on the same
subject. Theological principles are standard. But in the application of them, each theologian, however
shrewd, is liable to be influenced by the particular type of persons and circumstances of which he has
experience. An Italian theologian writing in Naples would probably have views of the excitability of
human nature quite different from those of a Swedish theologian living near the Arctic circle. If that is
kept in mind, the need for a second author in moral theology may be more evident. Even in dogma,
despite its serene remoteness from the varieties of human temperament, a second author can be almost a
revelation. One will suddenly realize that there are difficulties in the question which our seminary author
never dealt with. New arguments, new points of view, new light, are the result of going to another author.
Even apart from the benefit of plurality, there is the undeniable fact that no man can start “digesting” his
four years’ course in theology until he has been over it. It is only then that he can begin to understand the
synthesis, to see things as a whole. And until he sees things as a whole, he cannot be a theologian.
To brush up, to review, to digest, and to expand our theological learning would seem work
enough. But the Holy Father is not satisfied with that. He continues:
“Yet more is required. The dignity of the office he holds, and the maintenance of a becoming
respect and esteem among the people, demand more than purely ecclesiastical learning. The priest must
be graced by no less knowledge and culture than is usual among well-bred and well-educated people of
his day. This is to say that he must be healthily modern...” Then the Holy Father encourages those whose
tastes and special gifts draw them to specialize in a particular branch of science or art. He tells them that
“they do not thereby deny their clerical profession,” and he continues, “Among the rest of the clergy,
none should remain content with a standard of learning or culture which sufficed, perhaps, in other times;
they must try to attain — or, rather, they must actually attain — a higher standard of general education
and of learning. It must be broader and more complete; and it must correspond to the generally higher
level and wider scope of modern education as compared with the past.”
And lest someone should cite the Curé of Ars and say that holiness is enough, he explains that
Our Lord chose the saintly Curé so “that all might learn, if there be a choice, to prize holiness more than
learning; not to place more trust in human than in divine means.” But it is merely a question of
perspective, for he adds: “In the natural order, divine miracles suspend for a moment the effect of
physical laws, but do not revoke them. So, too, the case of these Saints, real living miracles in whom high
sanctity made up for all the rest, does not make the lesson we have been teaching any the less true or
necessary.” Thus the Holy Father. And so if the Reverend Reader is a “real living miracle in whom high
sanctity makes up for all the rest” — what we have to say about study does not apply to him; but if he is
not quite so holy as all that, the obligation to study remains for him as laid down by Canon Law and by
the Holy Father, Pius XI.
Many priests will wonder what “higher study” has got to do with their ministry to their particular
parochial congregation. Common sense and experience tell them that their sermons and instructions must
be as simple as possible. The finer points of thought or of style would be worse than useless in their
pulpits. But even where their congregations are just ordinary, one must remember that it is the reserve of
strength that gives force to the blow. The presentation of a simple outline of the faith demands wide
knowledge and understanding of it. Even when talking to the rudes, our training and reading will — if
properly used — be an asset to us. But there are few parishes where there are not at least some men of
intelligence, some people who read, some people who think. Wherever men congregate, religious topics
sooner or later come up for discussion, and the Catholic is often presented with many definite difficulties
and problems. If his parish priest is not a man of learning to whom is he to go for help? Priests would
often be very disturbed, when they have parried a few awkward questions from young people because of
their inability to answer them and their unwillingness to admit it, if they could realize how clearly the
young mind sees through them and how often the feeling is born in that mind that, after all, the Church is
not quite all she says she is — the pillar and the ground of truth. A man of learning is always ready to
admit the limits of his own knowledge. The man who is less wise does not even know his limitations.
Such a man can do much damage to souls. His inquirers frequently see through his attempts to bluff them
and may sometimes jump to a general conclusion of ecclesiastical ignorance from a particular example.
All will readily admit the difficulty in dealing with questions that require abstract philosophy or wisdom
of experience in the inquirer to make it possible for him to comprehend their solution. Yet bluffing or
evasion is not the way to meet the difficulty. Far better — and more truly humble — to make a candid
avowal of the position without attempting to be “patronizing,” and then, perhaps, to suggest some reading
which would help the inquirer, if not to solve his problem, at least to understand how much is involved in
its solution. But there are many difficulties which every priest should be able to handle, and no priest has
a right to assume that there is no one in his parish who requires a solution for them. The thinking men
are, of course, a small minority. Yet they cannot be overlooked. It is they who affect current thought and
mould society. No priest dare confine his attention to the average middle of his parish. He must be
prepared to deal with both extremes, even if it be only to send them to a specialist.
In his efforts to equip himself a priest must not be satisfied with mere knowledge as such.
Understanding is also required. Nowadays it is fairly easy to acquire a superficial acquaintance with the
more obvious facts in many branches of knowledge; and — if one may judge from the popularity of
digests — there is a keen appetite for such information. Such knowledge is not enough for a priest and it
would be fatal for him to think so. He must read and reflect enough to make him keep his head above the
flood of facts that is so common nowadays. It may horrify the reader when we suggest that a return to
philosophy is one way of avoiding that danger. Yet we would urge the priest not to overlook that branch
of study, even if only to approach it through Ethics or Natural Theology, in both of which subjects some
very fine books have recently appeared. However, that is rather a personal suggestion. Qui potest cap
capere — capiat.
One reason why theological study is so important for the priest, is because dogma is the only
proper foundation for devotion. Without it we are mere sentimentalists, or even emotionalists. Our
separated brethren supply many illustrations of what spirituality without dogma can become. The subject
is too big to treat of here; we content ourselves with assuring the priest that any time given to the study
and understanding of dogma will pay very rich dividends in his spiritual life, to say nothing of its effects
in his preaching and direction to others. But let us leave these sanctions and fall back upon the
instructions of the Holy Father. These make it clear that it is the Will of God that a priest should study.
He cannot then be true to his daily oblation of himself to God at Mass if he refuses to fulfil that
obligation. This may seem a burden, but in reality it is a relief. For it means that no matter what
opportunities of doing good a priest may have to pass over in order to comply with the law of the Church
and the instructions of the Holy Father, he need not worry. He is doing something better. He is doing
God’s Will, and if his dispositions are right, by doing that he is in union with Christ — much more so
than if he were engaged at any other task, however holy or apostolic. And union with Christ is the only
way to bear fruit for God.
It is of utmost importance for every priest to realize this. And, as we say, it should be also a
tremendous relief. Because, when a priest sits down to study, no matter how acutely he feels the call of
souls in distress, he can assure himself that he is doing the very best thing that he can do to help them.
That is one reason why we are so insistent on appealing to the Holy Father’s instructions in this matter.
They assure the priest that is God’s Will for him. Doing God’s Will is the surest way to divine union —
in fact, given the right dispositions, it may be said to be divine union. And no one who remembers Our
Lord’s address to His Apostles at the Last Supper can deny that divine union is the way par excellence to
bear fruit for souls and for God. No priest then, however busy he may be, need have any hesitation about
setting some time apart for study. For some men, such work is congenial; but for many it can be rather
tedious. The latter must remember that a priest is a man who has dedicated himself and his life
completely to God, not merely when he undertook the office of the priesthood, but also each time he
offers sacrifice to God. God has a right to determine how He shall be served. (That is the basis of our
rejection of all forms of non-Catholic worship). And when He has indicated how He wishes a priest to
serve Him, it would be a very false zeal which would induce a man to set aside God’s wishes on the
ground that he could serve Him better elsewhere.

UNION WITH JESUS

THERE IS ONE characteristic common to all the Saints and holy people of the Church — a
characteristic that predominates in the lives of the Apostles. It is their personal love of Our Lord. By
limiting his union to certain texts, a priest can consider his life as one of a laborer in God’s vineyard
winning souls by personal toil and effort, for the sake of an eternal reward. The dominant characteristic in
such a conception is that of service. Now, this is quite different from Our Lord’s view, as expressed when
He said to His Apostles: “You are My friends. . . I will not now call you servants.” And He went further,
He insisted that they are the friends of His choice. “I have chosen you,” (Cf. John XV, 14-16). It is
essential to remember this fact. We priests are chosen by Our Lord for a purpose. And the reason He
chose us is not because of our own merits or talents, but because of His own goodness and mercy. He
chose us because He loved us — loved us quite beyond our own merits. In fact, any good there is in us is
of His love for us. And having loved us, He has shared us everything. He has made us part of Himself —
sharers in His Priesthood. We share in His merits, in His powers, in His virtues; everything He has is at
our own disposal. All is ours. He Himself is ours, for He dwells in our souls to share our lives. No amount
of service, service as such, can return such love. If we want to realize how inadequate mere service would
be, let us look around at the married couples we know, and note how dissatisfied a man or woman is who
loves his or her consort intensely and receives in return only service — no matter, how efficient that
service may be. Personal love is essential in such cases. This is even more true of our case in regard to
Our Lord. We must give Him personal love. One has only to read any of the literature in regard to the
Sacred Heart to realize how much our personal love means to Our Lord and how little anything else of
ours counts in His eyes if we do not give it to Him out of love.
Our Lord’s plan for each priest is personal partnership: “We: Jesus and I.” This is how He would
have each priest live and act — in the first personal plural. Our Lord wants to share every moment of our
life, especially every moment of our ministry. He wants us to live and work in complete dependence
upon Himself and His love, never forgetting, never doubting it. He wants us to think of Him always in the
second person singular — not the third, as many priests do. He wants us to be His friend; but He wants
even more than that. He wants us to find in Him, and to give to Him, all the love that human hearts can
give each other. Writing for English-speaking priests, one must here advert to the hesitation or reserve
that some temperaments experience when there is talk of love — especially of love viewed from the
more human side. Too-literal translations from the Romance languages, too emotional appeals addressed
to us in our youth, too “precious” exhortations from some over-zealous nuns, exaggerated sentiment and
pathos in sermons, bad art in poetry and painting, and a hundred and one other exaggerations of piety,
may have “conditioned” us so that we are allergic to any appeal that even faintly recalls our past
memories. Present-day psychology, too, has created in many minds a distrust of the more human side of
devotion, though it is rather with reference to Our Lady than to Our Lord that it is operative. This is a
specter that must be laid. There are modern psychologists who seem to consider that all our motives and
our attachments originate in some form of sex appetite. The higher movements of our heart are but
sublimated “sex-drives,” they hold. Even if that were true of the natural loves, we are here dealing with
the supernatural.
But it is not even true of the natural. Even if we limit ourselves to the observations on which
these writers base their conclusions, the most that can be suggested is that there is a fundamental,
undifferentiated “drive” which can be turned towards various ends and utilized by various appetites.
Working in countries where moral standards are lax, where there is little or no restraint on passion, and
where children are often brought up without religion, it is not surprising that they should frequently find
this “drive” has been associated with the strongest animal passion in man. But that does not mean that it
originates in it. In fact, if one studied their material closely, I think one could find evidence in favor of
the independent origin of these things. No one, especially a Catholic confessor, will question the
frequency of their association and their significance. But a Catholic will also realize that all human
relationships have their origin in the mind of the Creator and that, like the colors of the rainbow coming
from white light, they are different components and manifestations of a higher love which contains them
all eminently. It is much more scientific and much more certain to say that the love of a father, the love
of a mother, the love of a brother, the love of a husband, the love of a friend, all manifest different
aspects of a love that can be found burning in the Heart of Jesus — than to see in all these loves the mere
“sublimation” of an animal passion in which they have their origin.
While all spiritual authorities agree that the natural can intrude and infect our motives in the
spiritual life, I think we can safely set aside any fears based on the ideas of some modern psychologists
about their fundamental origin. The love of God in our hearts is something supernatural, something
poured out there by the Holy Spirit. All we have to do is to make our natural appetites subject to His
sway, and we need have no hesitation in fulfilling the Divine commandment to love the Lord with our
whole heart and our whole soul, with all our mind and all our strength. It is because this personal love of
Our Lord is so important in the spiritual life of a priest, that we advert to these difficulties, which to
many minds may seem merely chimerical. But one must try to meet the needs of all temperaments. Many
are afraid of falling into sentimental excesses in their devotion if they give free rein to the heart in loving
Our Lord. It might be well if they would consider for a moment the possibility of erring more seriously
by being too cautious. We cannot get rid of human nature and its needs. As someone put it, translating
the Latin tag: “You may drive nature out with a pitch fork, but it will always come home to roost.” If one
leaves the natural appetites of the heart starved by confining oneself to a too-abstract devotion,
completely neglecting the claims of the flesh and blood, first of all one is depriving oneself of the great
help which the emotions can be in the spiritual life when they are properly controlled; secondly, there is
the danger that our hearts may seek their natural satisfaction in far more dangerous ways. It is not good
for man to be alone; and if Jesus be not our friend, we may seek friendship — sentimental friendship--
elsewhere and with disastrous results.
Then, too, there is the possibility that, by making God as remote as the Alpine snows, our
service of Him may degenerate into something animated by a mere motive of gain that is quite close to
selfishness. There are men who work — and work earnestly — from an abstract sense of duty and a sort
of self-righteousness, sometimes achieving a sense of self-exaltation, giving thanks that they are not like
the rest of men and, by ascribing to their own talents and diligence in the work of the ministry the success
they achieve, thereby make themselves hateful in the eyes of God by their pride. External regularity and
internal diligence are often more the work of self-love than of divine love. Such men rather repel souls
than attract them. At least, when souls do come to them, they miss something, something which the close
friend of Jesus is always able to give them, though often he is quite unconscious of the fact. If one is
going to err, better to err on the side of forging too many bonds with Jesus, than too few. Our Lord wants
all we have to give Him. If there is anything amiss in the manner of our giving He can rectify it. Let us
then keep close to Him. How then are we to do this?
The first step is to ask help of Him who promised that we shall receive if we ask. And if our
prayer is to be sincere we must be prepared to set aside all obstacles to companionship with Jesus. War
has to be declared on habitual sin. Prejudices, inhibitions, reserves, have to be examined and deprived of
any undue influence on our attitude. And then we must cultivate liberty of spirit. This is of the utmost
importance. Companionship with Christ is not in practice a matter of physical nearness, for He is near us
— He is in us — all the time. It rather depends on our avoidance of all things that would make us
unwilling to advert to His presence. Now if we are over-scrupulous — if we are liable to see sin where
there is really no sin — we shall be finding obstacles to this companionship all day long, and it will be
unbearable. At the risk of differing from the views of many readers, we would suggest that the spiritual
life — at least, in so far as companionship with Jesus is concerned — is far better served by a broad,
wide, common-sense code of conduct, than a narrow, over-strict, rigorism that feels always bound to
choose the better and the safer of two views. The point is that the liberal view leaves us free to share
more of our life with Christ; and the more we keep in contact with Him, the better we shall become. The
strict attitude — at first sight the safe one — only tends to make us turn away from Christ — and that is
spiritual suicide.
The next step is to glory in our infirmities and to realize that the particular “formality” under
which Christ unites Himself to us, is as our Savior. He expects to find us infirm. He even expects to find
that we are sinners. Even our sins need not separate us from Him, for He came to save sinners. If we offer
them to Him and point out to Him that they are only symptoms of a more fundamental weakness and
illness in our souls, we can forge a link with Him that need never embarrass us. For no patient is
embarrassed by his illness in the presence of the doctor, and can one, even in one’s wildest nightmares,
imagine the Gentle Physician deserting a patient because he is ill? No, the real trouble is that we are too
proud to be merely His patients. We have not the humility, we have not the attitude of true spiritual
childhood. Unless you be converted and become as little children you shall not enter the Kingdom of
Heaven,” (cf. Matt. xviii, 3). We do not know ourselves, because we do not want to know how weak we
are, and we do not know the Heart of Jesus, because His goodness and mercy are well nigh unbelievable.
Perhaps the best way to indicate here how Our Lord wants to be regarded, is to quote from the
notes of Sr. Josefa Menendez, passages which she records as having been uttered to her by Our Lord
Himself. Without passing any judgment on their authenticity, no one who knows the doctrine of the
Church can question their correspondence with actual reality. Sr. Josefa quotes Our Lord as saying: “Of
consecrated priests and religious, My elect and chosen ones, I ask once more all their love, and that they
should never, never, doubt Mine, and, above all, that they should trust Me implicitly. What is easier than
reliance on My Heart . . .? I shall make people understand that My first work in their souls has no other
foundation than their own nothingness and frailty; and there begins the first link of the chain of love,
which I prepare for them from all eternity. I ask for nothing better than to absolve erring souls... How
tenderly I welcome those who after a first fall come to Me for pardon. ... and should they sin again, nay
even often, I will forgive them a million, million times; love never wearies — and I will wash them in
My Blood and blot out every stain from first to last. I do not want their union with Me to be of an
indefinite character, but as close and intimate as that between two people who live in familiar friendship
and who, even when no word is spoken, yet have a constant regard and mutual attention for one another
— the result of their affection.” These are but a few sentences from a collection of many such, but they
should answer any objection one may feel to aspiring to close and constant companionship with one’s
Savior.
Perhaps there is one mistake that may be responsible for our hesitation. Even though we regard
Him as our Savior, we think of His saving action as something confined to the past; He saved us from our
past sins; but now that He has restored us to life, we feel that we cannot count in the same way on His
saving grace if we fall again. That view is quite inadequate and incorrect. Our Lord is present to us every
moment of our lives, saving us from ourselves, from the world, and from the devil. He is incessantly
supplying for us, repairing our mistakes, supplying for our short-comings, supplementing us in every
possible way. He will forgive us and restore us seventy times seven times. He is always Our Savior, Our
Jesus. Perhaps one more quotation from Sr. Josefa will help: “My love for them goes further: not only
shall I make use of their daily life by giving their least actions a divine value, but I will make use of their
very failings and frailties, and even their falls for the salvation of the world.”
To them that love God, all things work together for good. No matter what we have done, or what
we are, we can find in Jesus a Savior Who, being omnipotent, is able to save us from everything and
Whose Heart is burning with the desire to do so. We have only to go with confidence to the throne of
grace. This life of companionship with Christ, sums up all that we have written about the spiritual life of
the priest. If one lives and works in Christ’s company, there is no need to worry about the different
details of the spiritual life. They almost automatically look after themselves. The different virtues come
into play as required, the various duties and exercises follow from our conversation with Christ. The little
duties of the day take on a new significance. Companionship with Jesus sums up everything and vivifies
everything. Did He not Himself sum it all up: “Abide in Me”? To find this companionship, to achieve it,
to persevere in it, what are we to do? The answer can be given in one word. That word is “Mary.” Where
else shall we find the child, as Pius X asks, but in the arms of His Mother? Who else will unite us to
Christ but she of whom the same Pope has written: “There is no one more capable of joining us with
Christ,” (Ad diem illum). Devotion to Mary then is an integral part of devotion to Christ and we shall
consider it in our next chapter.

BEHOLD THY MOTHER

 THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN Mary and the priesthood dates back to its very institution.
Christ Himself became our Priest in His Mother’s womb at the moment when She was dedicating Herself
to be the Mother of the Redeemer. When the same High Priest was sacrificing Himself on the Cross, His
dying words announced Mary’s maternal office in the Church and were addressed to the newly ordained
St. John who “took her for his own.” When the Holy Ghost came upon the infant Church at Pentecost we
know that Mary was there, and here by Her prayers and example already began Her motherly charge of
the Mystical Body of Christ.
The Biblical references to Mary though few are full of significance. In the very first book of
Genesis we find the promise of our redemption pronounced in the unexpected form of a triumphant
warfare between Mary and Satan, between Her Seed and his. And this very same plan appears again in
the final book of the divine revelation when St. John tells us in the Apocalypse of the woman clothed
with the sun, crowned with twelve stars and the moon at her feet. He sees Her as a mother giving life to a
child, whom the dragon is waiting to devour. The importance and significance of this particular
presentation of God’s plan by the Holy Spirit must not be overlooked by us priests who are called to work
in the very task of giving life to the Mystical Body of Christ and protecting it from the attacks of Satan.
No priest can do without Mary. In Her merciful goodness She often co-operates without waiting for us to
turn to Her, but deliberately to neglect Mary is to reduce our power of action on souls to a minimum if
not to frustrate it completely.
The doctrine of the universal mediation of Mary is, of course, not a defined dogma. Yet it is so
true and so certain that no priest can afford to overlook the fact that every grace of which he is the
minister, is due, after Christ, to Mary. And in view of God’s evident plan to associate Mary with Him in
the triumph of the Redemption, is it too much to say that there are probably many graces that will not be
given if Mary is not asked for them? For it seems to be God’s plan not only that we should obtain all
things through Mary, but that we should recognize Her intervention so that She may have Her share of
the glory.
The question of the exact part played by Our Lady in the work of Redemption and its application
to the souls of men is a matter of controversy. But it is receiving more and more attention daily in the
Church, and despite all the differences of opinion, there seems to be a steady tide of increasing support
for the views which give Her a more prominent place in the scheme of things. Undoubtedly some
enthusiasts exaggerate Her role, while others reduce it too much. In many countries where there is a large
Protestant population, zeal for their conversion makes men anxious lest they should scandalize the weak.
Despite all that, Her role as the New Eve in union with the New Adam is being examined and its details
are being worked out, so that more and more She takes the place beside Her Son that it appears to be His
Will to give Her. It is especially true that the present age is the age of Mary. Her action is becoming more
evident and more extensive every day. Fatima is but one of many symptoms that draw attention to Her.
She is the Mother of the Whole Christ; we priests have to share in that office. God having decided that
the regeneration of the human race should be the work of a New Eve as well as of a new Adam — one
has only to read St. Irenaeus to find how old the tradition is — we priests, all due proportion being
guarded, can no more do without Mary than we can do without Christ. True, our dependence on Him is
ex natura rei, and our dependence on Mary is only because God has so willed it. Yet She must co-operate
with our work or else it will be sheer sterility.
Readers will pardon this discussion of dogma, but we feel it essential to remind them that
devotion to Mary has a deep theological foundation. Too often it is preached as a matter of sentiment, or
perhaps as a matter of expediency. Properly understood, it is a matter of necessity, for Mary’s place in
God’s plan is no mere ornamental one, but pertains to its very integrity. Does not Pius X write: “Nimium
scilicet haec comprobatur ex dolenda eorum ratione, qui aut daemonis aestu aut falsis opinionibus,
adiutricem Virginem praeterire se posse autumnant. Miseri atque infelices, praetexunt se Mariam
negligere, honorem, ut Christo, habeant: ignorant tamen non inverniri nisi cum Matre ejus,” (Encl. Ad
diem illum, 1904). The whole of this Encyclical should be familiar to every priest; it is our answer to any
who feel that what we have written is too strong.
The point is that God intends to put the devil in his place. That is more effectively done by
making him experience his defeat through a human creature, and a woman at that, than by Divine action
alone. It is true that Mary cannot be numbered among the foolish things of this earth, or the weak. But we
ourselves do definitely belong there. And our choice by God to assist in His work of regeneration and
liberation is part of the same policy of showing His power, by using mere human instruments to triumph
over the prince of darkness. We need not be surprised then, that Mary is to be found active wherever
grace flows. After all, grace is the life of the soul. Is not Mary our Mother? We priests, then, both in our
own spiritual life and our pastoral work must give Mary Her due place. We must honor Her, and
incidentally remind ourselves of our dependence upon Her, by certain devotions. We must depend on Her
in our work. We must have absolute confidence in Her, and we must try to put souls in contact with Her.
Personal devotion to Mary is not such an easy matter to prescribe in detail. The perfect way of
being devoted to Her is to follow Her one commandment “Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye.” It
implies the whole of the Christian life. To our mind the fundamental thing is rather an attitude of mind
than a program of practices. Still, an attitude of mind calls for external expression, and in fact grows by
such expression. So that we must pray to Mary. Had I been writing this some years ago, I should have put
a choice of two prayers to Mary before the reader, either the Little Office or the Rosary. There are so
many men who find the Rosary hard to say that I should have agreed readily to their saying the Little
Office instead. However the insistence of authority on the Rosary, (cf. Can. 125) and Our Lady’s own
request at Fatima make me hesitate. If one can at all manage to say a Rosary every day, it should be
done. However, prudence makes me add that there may be cases where a more limited plan will succeed
better. At least, let us decide to say the complete Rosary — fifteen decades-once a week. That means a
decade every morning, a decade every evening, and an extra one fitted in somewhere, say either on
Saturday or Sunday. Many of those who find the five decades a difficult task, a penance rather than a
prayer, will be probably sufficiently courageous to face a decade at a time. After all it can be said
anywhere — and one should not be afraid to say it while walking or moving about. If the continual
repetition dulls the meaning of the words for us, at least we can console ourselves that the words in which
God made His proposal to the chosen Mother of His Son — have a meaning and a memory for Mary that
is beyond telling. Surely, She will delight in these words of ours even if we do not savor them, and after
all, it is She whom we want to please.
Still, the Rosary for some men will always be a problem. Distractions, routine, repetition, tend to
make it a mere mechanical lip-offering. Often a man comes to the end of the fifth decade of the beads to
find his mind has been miles away all the time. Public recitation with others is often a help. Moving
about is sometimes a remedy. Distributing the five decades over different parts of the day may also serve.
But however poor our performance, no priest should ever be satisfied with less than the fifteen decades a
week. It may not suit us — but Our Lady wants it that way. She has a Mother’s right to Her own way. If
that is not enough, the Little Office in whole or in part, will suit those who need a printed page to keep
their thoughts from wandering. The use of an English translation will help to give the psalms sufficient
novelty in comparison with the Latin Psalms of the Breviary. Again this is a devotion which is better
distributed over different parts of the day. One word of warning should be added. If the recitation of the
Little Office tends to make us rush the Breviary or interfere with our discharge of it in any way — the
Little Office should be omitted. First things first; commands before counsels. Far better say the Breviary
well, and omit the Little Office, than “get in” both of them at the cost of devotion or reverence. We can
always say the Breviary in union with Our Lady. This is a devotion earnestly to be recommended. We say
the office in the name of the Church. Surely Mary says it with us. Why not say it with Her? A small
picture protruding from our Breviary will help to keep Her in our minds.
There are many other devotional practices, but one should avoid overloading one’s program with
different exercises. A few simple exercises to express and to nourish our attitude are sufficient. For the
point about devotion to Mary is this — that it is really only part of devotion to Christ. In the first place in
honoring Mary we are only acting in partnership with Christ Who lives in us. In the second place, in
seeking Her protection, it is the life of Christ within us that we are committing to Her care. So, too, in the
work of our apostolate, we go to Mary that She may bring forth and nourish the life of Christ in the souls
of those in our charge. In reality devotion to Mary and devotion to Her Son are not two completely
separate devotions but are rather two different aspects and ways of devotion to Christ. Instead then of
multiplying practices, it is better to show our devotion to Mary by our devotion to Her Son. By doing our
pastoral work in partnership or better still in union with Mary we are giving Her due honor, we are
offering Her another chance of doing something for Her Son, we are ensuring the fruitfulness of our
Apostolate, and we are exercising quite a number of virtues that are especially pleasing to God. In fact all
the virtues of spiritual childhood can be found in devotion to Mary. And as Benedict XV reminded us,
this spiritual childhood is essential for our salvation. “Unless you be converted, and become as little
children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
No priest need ever fear that in paying attention to Mary, he is neglecting Her Son. In the first
place, Mary never retains anything for Herself; everything we give Her is given immediately to Her Son.
She is a perfect mediatrix. She only intervenes to unite more closely — She only receives to give more
perfectly. Secondly, it is the unfailing experience of all who have preached devotion to Our Lady in any
sincerity, that they are gently but inevitably lead to a new height of devotion to Her Son. And then only
do we discover the meaning of devotion to the Holy Ghost. In fact Mary introduces us into the life of the
Trinity in accordance with the prayer of Her Son at the Last Supper. Devotion to the Father, to the Son,
to the Holy Ghost, devotion to the Human Nature of the Son, devotion to His Mystical Body all grow out
of devotion to Mary and are welded in a truly wonderful manner into a unity that at first sight seems
impossible. Gustate et videte. The real devotion to Our Lady, as we have said, is an attitude of heart and
mind. The best expression of this is the total consecration of oneself to Mary, on the lines indicated by St.
Grignion de Montfort. This is so important that we shall discuss it in the following chapter. Let us add
one remark. Every thing Christ received from this world was received through Mary. He had no human
father. All His Body and Blood were derived from Her. His Soul was, of course, directly created by God;
but His Body was formed from Mary’s flesh and blood without any other human co-operation. Even after
His birth, the food on which His Body grew, was prepared by Mary. There is a parallel in the growth of
the Mystical Body. In some way or other all its “increase” must come through Mary. It is by Mary that
we are fashioned and formed so as to be suitable food for the Mystical Body of Christ. And it is only in
close union with, and complete dependence upon Mary, that we priests can unite souls to Christ. Her co-
operation is essential for all the work of our apostolate. Let us quote Pius X; “There is no more certain
and more efficacious way of uniting all to Christ than by Mary. . . . Clearly there is no other alternative
for us than to receive Christ from the hands of Mary,” (Ad diem illum). We must, then, give Her Her
proper place in our spiritual life and in every act of our apostolate.

CONSECRATION TO OUR LADY

DEVOTION TO OUR LADY being so important for the priest, both for his own spiritual life
and in his apostolic ministry, it is only right that we should examine the form of devotion which St. Louis
Grignion de Montfort expounded in his True Devotion to The Blessed Virgin, and in The Secret of Mary.
This is all the more necessary, as the English translations of these works savor of the time and the fashion
belonging to the original, and may seem too “flowery” and fanciful for the modem reader in English.
Whatever we may think about the style — there can be no question about either the sublimity or the
soundness of the doctrine. One has only to read the Encyclical of Pius X, Ad diem illum (Feb. 1904), to
see how closely the ideas of St. Louis are in harmony with those of the Vicar of Christ.
The devotion proposed by St. Grignion consists in making a complete consecration of one’s
entire self to Mary by a special act, which act is but the initiation of a life of complete dependence upon
and dedication to Her. The purpose of this action is to belong more completely to Jesus Christ and to be
more closely and more securely united to Him. In a word, its purpose is “to abide in Him” as He Himself
prescribed for all His Apostles. What does this consecration entail? By it we give Mary all that we are, all
that we have, and all that we ever may become or receive — in a word every thing of which we have any
power to dispose. We first of all give Mary our body and its future to be used in Her service either in
activity or in suffering as She desires. As a consequence, we accept all the dispositions of Providence in
regard to health, strength, skill, sickness, life and death, from the very beginning of our life to its end. In
addition we give Her complete power of disposal over all our worldly possessions, relying on Her
maternal care to provide for us and using all that we have in Her services. But the gift of our body is only
a prelude to the greater gift of our soul. All our faculties are placed at Mary’s disposal for the service of
Her Son (we repeat, there is no difference between Her service and that of Her Son — they are one in
Christ”). We employ them for Her — not for our own glory — and we commit the outcome of our efforts
to Her protection, accepting external failure and success with prudent indifference. Our soul itself, with
the Christ life that Baptism has implanted therein, we put into Her hands, relying on Her to ensure its
sanctification, its perseverance, and its ultimate union with God in heaven. In particular we see all that
happens to us from a supernatural standpoint, from which the soul appears more important than the body,
and eternity more important than time.
The offering however goes further. Our prayers and the prayers that are said for us, even after
death, are made over to Her to divert according to Her intentions. That does not mean that we are not to
pray for particular intentions. There are many just reasons why we should do so; in fact such intentions
are often obligatory. Even in the Canon of the Mass we should not be afraid to specify our particular
commemorations; to do so is more in accordance with the mind of the Church. But all our prayers should
be offered up with the implicit intention that Mary can also apply their purport and application as She
will. We have every reason to trust Her administrative powers. The supernatural value of our works also
are included in our offering. The satisfactory and impetratory value is Hers to use as She pleases; but we
even give Her our merits in so far as it is possible to do so. Merit de condigno is of course inalienable,
but merit de congruo may sometimes be transferable. We however make no reserves; the whole
supernatural bank account is made over to Mary to draw on whenever and however She wills.
It is essential if we are to understand this devotion properly to understand that it is only a means
to an end. St. Louis de Montfort suggests a formula of consecration. The true nature of this devotion is
shown in the fact that the dedication part of the prayer commences with a renewal of our baptismal vows,
a complete donation of ourself “to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry our cross after Him, all
the days of our life, and to be more faithful to Him than we have ever been before.” It then immediately
proceeds to address Our Lady. “In the presence of the whole heavenly court I choose Thee this day for
my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to Thee, as Thy slave, my body, my soul, my goods
both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present and future, leaving to
Thee the entire and full right of disposing of me; and of all that belongs to me, without exception,
according to Thy good pleasure, and to the greatest glory of God in time and eternity.” The final
paragraph of the prayer is significant. “O Faithful Virgin, make me in all things so perfect a disciple,
imitator and slave of the Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ Thy Son, that by thy intercession and by Thy
example, I may attain to the fullness of His Age on earth and of His Glory in heaven Amen.”
We stress the fact that the chief purpose of this complete consecration to Mary is to achieve our
complete consecration to Christ. Many Catholics are still afraid of devotion to Our Lady. They are afraid
of exaggeration, of mere sentimentality, of interference with the honor due to God. They even suggest
that it is better to go direct to Christ. This is a complete mistake. St. Louis de Montfort’s own comment is
noteworthy. “Be on your guard against believing that it would be more perfect to go straight to Jesus,
straight to God. If you do so, your work and your intention will be of but little value; while if you go to
Him through Mary, they will be the work of Mary in you, and consequently will be exalted and eminently
worthy of being offered to God.” Mary is the Mother of Christ. No mother is so inhuman as to steal the
food of her children. We and all that we do, are the food of Christ. But just as Christ’s natural body was
formed in Mary, by Mary, and with Mary, so His mystical body is also formed in Mary, by Mary and
with Mary.
That is the way He has chosen. We cannot improve upon His arrangements.
It must be remembered that this devotion is no passing act; it is a life-long policy, a habitual
attitude of mind, a continued turning of the heart. It needs frequent renewal, but often a smile or an
imperceptible glance towards Our Lady is all that is necessary. It is not something to be undertaken
without consideration and examination. Readers who wish to examine it will find all they need in De
Montfort’s two little books. There is also an excellent summary in Tanquerey’s Spiritual Life and the
same author discusses the question again in his Doctrine and Devotion. The classical work on the subject
is: Lhoumeau: La Vie Spirituelle à l’école de Montfort.
It is also important to note, that the devotion does not interfere with our direct approach to Jesus
Christ. On the contrary, it facilitates it. Mary is not like a mother who refuses to let her children be the
center of attention. She only desires to “decrease” that He may increase. When we do go to Jesus, it is
with a new confidence that She is with us, interceding for us, excusing us, making the way easy for us.
After all, we have crucified Him, and even though He has forgiven us, we may find it hard to forgive
ourselves. As a result, our approach to Him is hampered by a sense of our sins. The knowledge that Mary
is always with us, that we belong to Her, that He sees in us one of Her children, is of inestimable aid in
overcoming our diffidence. And in learning how to rely on Her to go to Christ, we are unconsciously
learning how to rely on Christ to go to God. There is hardly any more valuable Lesson.
There is another similar parallel that arises in devotion to Our Lady. The secret of true devotion
to Her, if one may so phrase it, is to become the nothingness that separates Jesus from Mary. All that
Mary does to us is done to Christ, all that Christ does to us is done to Mary, with Mary we serve Christ,
with Christ we may say that we honor Mary. Our whole life is a continual interchange of love between
Jesus and Mary in which we are but a willing instrument. Now this is a fine image of what our life should
be in regard to the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Our ultimate vocation is to share in some
mysterious way in that Divine Family Life. That vocation begins here on earth. The easiest way to learn
it and to accomplish it is by sharing in the “Family Life” of Jesus and Mary. It is not necessary to develop
this point here. Let it suffice to say — that no approach to Mary is ever permitted to end with Her. She
sees that all movements of our heart to Her lead us ultimately to the Blessed Trinity.
The more immediate results of this consecration to Mary — if it be made with sincerity and
generosity — are manifold and marvelous. There arises almost at once an extraordinary sense of positive
peace and unbounded confidence, which no amount of strain or worry or danger or temptation can lessen.
We belong to Mary: She will look after us and She can look after us much better than we can ourselves.
Our work is for Mary and Mary’s Son; She will guide it, She will aid it, She will ensure its fruitfulness.
No matter what help we need, no matter what special grace is required, we feel sure that Mary in Her all-
powerful intercession will obtain it in so far as God’s plan demands it. Those special helps, the happy
coincidences, the unexpected meetings, the chance words, the fortunate ideas, — that play so great a part
in the work of the apostolate, begin to multiply in a striking manner. Mary will not be outdone in
generosity. If we have given all to Her, She will not fail us.
If the whole of perfection may be summed up in the love of God for His own sake and of our
neighbor for God, it is not an exaggeration to say that there is hardly a better way of fulfilling this law of
perfection than by this complete consecration to Mary. Not only is it a complete offering of all that we
have to God, but it is the most effective way of serving our neighbor. Even with the best will in the
world, and the most complete generosity, no human mind can know where one’s forces are best
employed in the service of God. Even with the limits of our work marked out for us by authority, there is
always the problem of what is best to do, which is the best line of attack to follow up. But when all is
given to Mary, She applies all the results of our efforts at that point of the front in the battle between
Christ and anti-Christ where they will be of most value and effect. Even though the particular end we
have in view may not be reached and our efforts, say, to convert some soul end in failure, Mary will
apply the supernatural efficacy of our work elsewhere with the most fruitful results. Let us not forget the
extraordinary role that is marked out for Her in this “enmity” by God Himself as recorded in the third
chapter of Genesis.
In giving Mary the control of our life, our development and our work, we are only following the
example set by Our Lord for the first thirty years of His Life. Let us never forget how completely subject
He was to Mary from the first moment of the Incarnation — how completely dependent upon Her, how
completely at Her disposal. He has given us an example, that as He has done so also may we do.
The fundamental principle of the whole Christian life is incorporation in Christ. Whatever Mary
does to us is done to Christ, so that abandoning ourselves to Her Maternal care, we are only giving Her
another chance to do something for Her beloved Son. In fact we are giving Her an opportunity that our
Lord Himself could not give Her. For we are stained with sin; we are but human creatures. Is there not
something extra in the virtue that would stoop to help us which is not present in Her direct service of Her
Divine Son. In “mothering” us, Mary can show Her love for Christ in a way that was never possible in
regard to His own human nature. Let us give Her this opportunity and wonders will result.

CHRIST IN US

IT IS SURPRISING how small a part is played in the spiritual life of us priests by that
tremendous truth of the divine indwelling in our souls. We have all studied the Treatise on Grace: we
preach on the Sacraments; we warn our congregations that sin is the death of the soul; but what idea have
we of what really is involved in the soul’s supernatural life? Perhaps many texts of Scripture —
especially those of St. Paul — which would help us to realize something of the extraordinary nature of
this life of the soul have ceased to strike us because of their familiarity. One question, then, might help to
set us thinking. Our Lord Himself warned us that unless we eat of His Body and drink of His Blood, we
shall not have life in us. If, then, the Body and Blood of Christ must be the Food of our soul, what must
be its life? Theologically, perhaps, we would answer, “grace.” But that one word has a depth of meaning
that is only too often ignored. For when we talk of grace, we usually have in our minds the notion of
created grace. But this is only the effect of something far more fundamental. For created grace implies
uncreated grace. And uncreated grace is God Himself. When a soul then, is in the state of grace, when a
soul is supernaturally alive, God is in that soul. Some of His activities there may be appropriated to
particular Persons of the Blessed Trinity. We know that St. Paul speaks of charity being poured out in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given to us. The Holy Spirit is literally given to us in Baptism, in
Confirmation and in Ordination — in fact in all the Sacraments. He dwells in our souls, giving them life,
making them share in some way in His own divine nature, making us not only in name but in very truth,
sons of God. Let us be quite clear about it. This presence of God in our souls is something apart —
something quite different from the threefold presence of God in His creatures. There is, of course, room
for theological discussion as to the metaphysics of this presence. That, however, does not prevent our
stating definitely that the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are really, truly and substantially present
in our soul. Leo XIII, in his Encyclical on the Holy Ghost writes: “God, by grace, resides in the just soul
as in a temple, in a most intimate and peculiar manner. From this proceeds that union of affection by
which the soul adheres most closely to God, more so than a friend is united to his most loving and
devoted friend, and enjoys God in all fullness and sweetness. Now this wonderful union, which is
properly called “indwelling,” differing only in degree or state from that with which God beatifies the
Saints in Heaven, although it is certainly produced by the presence of the whole Blessed Trinity — “We
will come to him and make our abode with him” — nevertheless is attributed in a peculiar manner to the
Holy Ghost.” Perhaps it will be of help to quote a standard theologian’s summing up of his discussion of
the subject. Hervé, in his Treatise on Grace, writes: “God, according to the gift of sanctifying grace is
present in the soul in a new and quite special way, not only in so far as He infuses and conserves in us the
supernatural gifts which are participations of Himself as He is in Himself ( participationes Ipsius prout in
se est), but also in as much as He personally dwells in us, giving Himself to us as something intimate and
knowable quasi experimentaliter, which we can even now to some extent use and enjoy,” (Hervé,
Manual. Dogma. Vol. III, Par. 54). Readers will forgive these quotations, but I would not dare suggest
that we should “use” and “enjoy” God in our souls, without sound authority. The authority is quite sound,
but what about our practice? Do we make use of God in our souls? Do we enjoy Him? Is there anybody
who should do so as much as we priests should? We have received the Holy Ghost in ordination, and are
made participators not merely in the nature, but in the priesthood of Christ. Our life is devoted to His
work; it should be an intimate partnership with Him. Yet, too often it is something quite human and quite
solitary. We do not remember — if we have ever really known — the Gift of God. For the Gift of God is
God Himself.
One reason for this low level of living is that we adopt a wrong notion of what God wants. We
think He wants service. We think He needs our co-operation in the salvation of souls. That of course is
quite true — in one way. In another way, it is quite wrong. God certainly does not need our service, and
He only wants it in so far as it comes from something else. For God wants our love and friendship.
Nothing less will satisfy Him, nothing less will profit us in the slightest. God is in our souls to unite us
intimately to Himself. He wants to vivify us with His grace, to give us the power to be His friends, to
help us to love Him with a love that is the reflection of His own love for Himself. There is nothing
wanting to us in any grace for we have in ourselves the Author of all grace — God Himself. He is ours!
He is there to help us. He is our Paraclete. He is in our souls that we may have life and have it more
abundantly. All we have to do is to let Him live His life in us, for us and for Himself.
That is just the trouble. We want to live for Him — but it is our own life that we intend to live.
We tend to see in Him a source of the perfecting of ourselves, an ally in our schemes, a means to our
ends. Now God is not in our souls to live our life, according to our views, however enlightened they may
be. Our Lord has warned us with insistence that the spiritual life is a denial of ourselves. The Holy Ghost
prompts St. Paul to picture it as a putting off of the old man and a putting on of something new,
something fashioned in Christ, something animated and controlled by the Holy Spirit, something
completely belonging to the Father — for we are His sons. It is almost a new creation. In a word, it is
Christ. And Christ is All.
It is only when we ponder this great truth, when we read and re-read the Epistles of St. Paul and
consider the calm statements of theologians that we begin to realize the amazing gulf that separates the
Christian from the pagan, the supernatural from the natural, the divine from the human. And one is
brought to wonder where among Catholics is to be seen the corresponding difference in the character and
conduct of the men who have been raised to such a union with the divinity as have Catholics. And one
may ask, in particular, why is there so much that is merely and entirely “natural” and just like the rest of
men, even in us priests? One reason is that we do not take the spiritual life seriously enough. We have not
a high enough idea of what we are, or that to which we are called. It is of the highest significance that
that outstanding master of the spiritual life — St. Teresa of Avila — decided to portray it as a journey
into a castle, through seven mansions; the goal of the journey is God Himself; and the castle into which a
man journeys in quest of God is his own soul. We look for God outside of ourselves, and all the time He
is within. We try to find Him by our own efforts, and all the time, He is with us — is not His name
Emmanuel? — waiting and wanting to be our help and strength. We set union with Him as the remote
and distant object of our work, yet all the time union with Him is the beginning and the intimate source
of all our activity. What, in practice, can we do about it? The first thing is to read a little book by Fr. de
Jaegher, S.J., One with Jesus, to take our theology at its true value, to take St. Paul as truly inspired and
to take God at His word. Then we have to devote ourselves to God within us. Now, this activity of God in
our souls is attributed to the Holy Spirit, and we often find it hard to form an idea of the Holy Spirit that
will seize our minds and animate our activity. But even in this matter Christ is our salvation. Jesus Christ
is the revelation of God, and Christ Himself is present in us. Lest the theologians should raise their
eyebrows, let me quote St. John Chrysostom: “qui spiritum ha bet, non modo Christi esse dicitur, sed
etiam ipsum habere Christum. Non potest enim, spiritu praesente, non adesse Christus. Ubi enim una
Trinitas hypostasis adest, tota adest Trinitas,” (In Ep. ad Rom. 13. 8).
Let us then take as our slogan the words of St. Paul, “I live, now, not I, but Christ liveth in me,”
(Gal. ii. 20). Let us try to put this into practice. It means forgetting ourselves and remembering Christ. It
means giving up our own petty narrow interests and assuming those of Christ. It means an end to “I” —
the pronoun now is always “we” — except when we say “peccavi.” It means that when we pray, we let
Christ pray in us, and second His prayer. It means that we are no longer put out or annoyed at the sight of
our true selves, for we know that no matter what we are, Christ is saving us and supplying for us. It
means that we give up the dream of making of ourselves and our lives something wonderful of our own
creation, in which we can take pride; instead, we now leave it to Christ to communicate to us and to form
in us a beauty that is a reflection of His own and that is of His making. It means complete abandonment
to Christ, and complete self-surrender. There is one way of viewing the position that will help us to put
this doctrine into practice and to make it a vital force in our lives. Let us realize that our life is a
continuation of the life of Christ. The very words of St. John Chrysostom quoted above authorize us to
say that it is the presence of God within us in a special manner, which makes our lives such a
continuation. Fr. de Jaegher puts it very well in his little book One with Jesus. The finite life of Our Lord
on earth, despite its infinite depth did not exhaust the love of Christ for His Father. He loved Him and
devoted Himself to Him completely, for thirty-three years in complete subjection to the Holy Ghost. He
wants to continue that life in each of us. For that purpose He comes into our soul with His Holy Spirit in
Baptism. For that purpose He comes to us again and again and remains really, truly and substantially
present in us as a Person, with the same Holy Spirit, every time we receive Holy Communion. We must
never forget that even though the sacramental presence of His Body and Blood ceases when the sacred
species are completely changed in our bodies, yet the divine Person of Our Savior and His divinity
remain in our soul, as long as we do not commit mortal sin. This personal presence is the end, the
corporal presence is only a means to that end. Remaining then in us, burning with love for His Father and
for us, He waits for the complete surrender of our heart and our will — of our whole self and our whole
life. He wants to take over all our faculties that He may through them express His love of the Father in
devoted service and submission to His will. Our hands, our lips, our minds and our hearts must be His.
They are ours, and He will not take them by force; He waits for us to give them to Him. To give Him all
he wants, all we have to do is to identify ourselves completely with Him. In every action, in every prayer,
in every suffering, in every thought or act, we must decide that we are “Christ” — that He it is Who is
acting, praying, suffering and living in us. Once we can reach this point of view and adopt it habitually
there will come a wonderful transformation in our lives. For one thing, an entirely new meaning is given
to our smallest actions. They now take their importance from our union with Christ, and this is what
makes them fruitful. There is no longer any necessity to sigh for chances of “doing something” for God
or for souls; there is no longer any reason to be impatient with our personal limitations or with those of
our circumstances. Our apostolic zeal — if it be truly such — need not wait for “suitable” occasions of
satisfying itself. In all we say or do — if it is said or done in partnership with Christ, and in subordination
to Him — we abide in Him, and by that very fact, bear much fruit. It is true, that we may not have the
earthly glory of it — but if that is what we are seeking in our ministry, we are no longer true to our
vocation. The epitaph of those who thus “serve” God is summary: “They have received their reward”
On the other hand, such a life of continual dependence on God within us, opens the door to all
the treasures of the spiritual life. That region commonly called “mystical,” and so often and so wrongly
regarded as something inaccessible, something closed to “ordinary” souls, becomes opened up for us, for
the so-called mystical life is nothing but the full development of the ordinary life of the Christian where
the Holy Ghost is allowed to have His way. This will be especially true of our prayer. When we go to
pray we shall no longer rely on our own efforts, but, just as in the Mass we take over the Sacrifice of
Christ, and making it ours, present it to the Heavenly Father, so in prayer, we shall take over the prayer of
the Spirit of Christ, Who prayeth in us and with us, as St. Paul and St. Patrick amply testify — and
making it our own, offer it up to the Father. This prayer continues throughout the whole day. At any
moment we can turn to the Father saying: “Behold Thy well-beloved Son in whom Thou art well-pleased.
Hear Him!” — and we have a perfect prayer of praise and thanksgiving of atonement and intercession.
Each need of the day, whether it refers to ourselves or to those among whom we minister, can find in this
appeal a perfect manifestation to God, which brings us absolute assurance of Heavenly aid. The great
difficulty is that we will not renounce ourselves. That is probably partly due to the fact that we do not yet
know Our Lord sufficiently nor do we realize what He has done for us, or what He has promised to do for
us. He is our Savior. His Father is Our Father, His Spirit is our Sanctifier. His life is full of hidden
meanings and messages for those who realize that our life is but a continuation of His. The story of the
Gospels takes on a new meaning when we re-read it from this point of view. And the Mass takes on a
new significance and importance for our personal spiritual life.
Many readers may feel that all this has nothing to do with themselves; they may see in what we
have written a monastic ideal wrongly applied to the active life of the apostolate. The answer to that is
found in the 14th Chapter of St. John. Our Lord was not talking to monks. He was talking to His
Apostles, briefing them for their mission work, laying down the essential principles that must rule their
life. These words of Our Lord are addressed to you, Father. You are a priest; you are an apostle; you are
one of the Friends of Our Lord. He does not call you a servant. He has called you a friend, and insists that
you must abide in Him and He in you. Qui potest capere capiat.

CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL

THE INCREASING PROMINENCE and importance given to the doctrine of the Mystical Body
of Christ is one of the most significant features of the life of the Church in these days. But it is a doctrine
which is far from easy to explain even where one has ample space, and adequate summarization is still
more difficult. The Incarnation of the Son of God was the first part of God’s plan to save men; the second
part involves the union of all those who are to be saved in a supernatural organism, analogous to the
organism of the human body, in which Christ is described as the Head, the Holy Spirit as the Soul, and
each of us as the members. It is a unique union, and is therefore difficult to explain without error. Such
errors have been made, and the present Holy Father has warned us against them. No matter how close or
how intimate the union between the individual member and the Head may be, the human member never
loses his own personality, nor is he dispensed from the need and obligation of making his own personal
efforts, even though the fruit of his actions is due to the part played in them by Christ the Head of the
Body.
The application of this doctrine, so rich and so many-sided, to the spiritual life presents many
problems, so that if we confine ourselves here to one or two of the many possible points of view and
merely try to suggest a few ways in which a priest can use them in his spiritual life, readers will, we
hope, be patient, and will realize that no more can be attempted in a short article. But we can assure
every reader that the doctrine, though difficult, is well worth exploring, and its study will lead to may
new helps and hopes for our spiritual life. It is, however, not a doctrine of which the practical application
can be summed up in a few lines. Through our membership of Christ we enter into new and marvelous
relations with Christ and through Him with each Person of the Blessed Trinity. We have a new
relationship to Mary, to the Saints, to the Souls in Purgatory, and very significantly to each of our fellow
men. Even we are changed in ourselves, for St. Paul speaks of us as a “new creature” in Christ, (cf. ii
Cor. v. 17). Some “remote” preparation, then, by way of reading and reflection is required on the part of
each priest to enable him to apply the doctrine to his spiritual life. A priest, for example, must be familiar
with the doctrine of St. Paul, he should read some of the recent works on the Mystical Body, and he must
try to form for himself some sort of a working notion of what is suggested by St. Paul’s pregnant phrase
“in Christ.” He must try to realize that in all his contacts with his neighbor he himself is a member of the
Body of Christ, and he is dealing with another member. Might it be suggested that instead of
concentrating on the “pathology” of the members and their vices and sins, it would be well to give more
attention to what may be termed the “physiology” of the Mystical Body — that is the normal interaction
of the members?
In regard to the human body, physiologists discuss the workings of the heart, of the lungs, of the
stomach, etc.; psychologists talk about the acts of the will, of the intellect, of the imagination; yet in both
cases, one must always realize that the organ or the faculty is not really the agent. It is the human being
who acts through the faculty or the organ, though in many such discussions this fact is overlooked. When
we come to discuss the actions of the members of the Mystical Body of Christ, there are certain points of
difference from the human organism that must not be forgotten. The members of the Mystical Body are
persons, and they retain the dominion over their own actions. Yet even so, in their supernatural actions
they do act alone. Each member has his own personal contribution to make, but that must not lead us to
overlook the fact that God is also at work in a very special manner. The Spirit of Christ is the soul of our
spiritual life, and even though a theological analysis of His action would be difficult, we can state that in
all our supernatural actions Christ acts in us. Let us consider this for a moment.
Our Lord Himself taught His Apostles that He is the Vine, they the branches, and He warned
them that they could only bear fruit by abiding in Him. If the branch is in the Vine, the Vine must be in
the branch. If the branch bears fruit, can we deny that the Vine bears fruit? Does not St. Paul exclaim: I
live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me,” (Gal. ii. 20).” Cajetan’s commentary on this text authorizes our
statement that Christ acts in us. “All my vital acts,” he writes “such as to know, to think, to love, to be
glad, or to be sad, to desire or to work, are mine no longer; they no longer come from me but from Christ
within me.” And when he discusses the merits of our good works, he writes: “The merit of eternal life is
not attributed so much to our own works as to the works which, Christ our Head, performs in us and
through us,” (De Fide et operibus). This view was frequently repeated during the discussions at the
Council of Trent. Let us admit that one must be careful to avoid the errors of pantheism or quietism in
expressing it; but whatever about the formulation, the fact is that every time we priests perform a
supernatural action, Christ is our partner, Christ is our Head, Christ is our Life; and we rob Him of His
glory if we appropriate any of the good in our actions or in their fruits to ourselves.
That is the practical point. If we could only get out of the habit of patting ourselves on the back
whenever we achieve something in God’s service! When we consecrate or absolve, we know that through
the sacrament of Order, Christ consecrates or absolves in us and by us. We forget that through Baptism
and through the Blessed Eucharist Christ unites us to Himself and becomes the author of all our
supernatural actions. The one word supernatural should remind us of the folly of any human agent
claiming credit for a super-human work. True, God has attached merit to such works, but even such merit
is the free gift of His mercy and the fruit of the merits of Christ. In fact it is only because of His mercy
and love that He deigns to use us in His work. He allows us to contribute our tiny drop of water to the
wine of His own work in order that we may have a title to merit. But we are worse than fools if we
cannot overlook our own tiny contribution and try to remember Him who by His Passion and Death
enables these things to be done and us to share in their doing.
If we could only remember that in all our contacts with souls, Christ is acting in us, and that we
are acting on Christ, our whole outlook would be revolutionized. For we would immediately find a
perfect basis for unlimited confidence, and a means of solving the very difficult problem of maintaining a
spiritual life despite many activities. Consider first our ground for confidence. Whatever be our own sins,
or the sins of our client, we are both members of Christ, and His merits are more than enough to wash
away any obstacle to the gift of grace. It is of capital importance to remember this always. For the
realization of the need for grace in dealing with souls may discourage us if we realize how unworthy we
are because of our sins and negligences. Yet by Baptism Christ’s merits are ours, as if we ourselves had
suffered His Passion and Death. This is how St. Thomas puts it when discussing the effects of Baptism,
(cf. Summa. iii. 69. 2). Through Christ and in Christ both of us, priest and client, have a claim — the
claim of His well-Beloved Son in Whom He is well-pleased — on the aid of the Omnipotent Father. (Do
we ever remember these words of the Creed?) Through Christ and in Christ we have the Holy Ghost
Himself for our ally in changing human dispositions and rebellious wills. And if more be needed, as
members of Christ we can appeal to Mary with extraordinary meaning and with unshakeable assurance:
Monstra te esse Matrem!
 If we could realize all this, there would be no limit to our confidence when faced with any
problem in our apostolate — there would never be any need to try to deny our own limitations or any
reason to let them discourage us. On the contrary, we should glory in them. They are the ground of our
assurance and of confident courage, for like St. Paul, we glory in our own infirmities that the power of
Christ may dwell in us. Like St. Paul, we say in all confidence: “For when I am weak, then am I
powerful!” (ii Cor. xii. 10).
If a realization of the riches that are ours through our incorporation and function in the Mystical
Body of Christ can lead to such unlimited confidence that we act, like Our Lord Himself, “as one having
power,” surely it is well worth going to the trouble of some difficult reading and reflection to build up
that realization. When we are suddenly faced with the problem of disposing some reluctant sinner in a
busy confessional, there can be no question of pausing to make an explicit appeal to each member of the
Blessed Trinity, as well as to the Woman God gave us to be our Mother. But, if by reading and thinking
we have built up a sense of our relations with each Divine Person, there will be no need to formulate our
thoughts explicitly when the necessity for their aid arises; a silent appeal of our heart will suffice to draw
down Their mercy and Their assistance. But such a silent appeal implies a deep appreciation of our
position, and this requires time and thought for its development.
Reading then is essential. No priest can afford to ignore all that has been written recently on the
Mystical Body. Admittedly it means reading dogma; but why on earth should a priest be afraid of
dogma? What else has he got to build on? Readers who have access to the work of Fr. Mersch, S.J.,
translated into English by Fr. Kelly, S.J. and published by Bruce under the title, The Whole Christ, should
consult the chapter wherein he treats of St. Augustine’s sermons to the people. Nothing could be better
calculated to startle us into a true outlook on this wonderful doctrine. Consider only two texts.
Commenting the words of Our Lord: “For them do I sanctify myself in truth,” the Doctor of Grace puts
on the lips of Our Lord, the daring words: “Quia et ipsi sunt ego,” — “For they too are Myself!” And he
sums up the whole aim and plan of the Redemption in a marvelous phrase : “Et erit unus Christus
seipsum amans” — “and there shall be one Christ loving Himself.”
If we only could get some idea of the extraordinary meaning underlying these two phrases, our
studies would have an amazing effect not only on our apostolate but on our whole spiritual life. The great
problem for the priest is to maintain an interior life throughout all the exterior works of the ministry. He
is called to perfection, and yet the very life that his vocation demands seems, at times, to be the greatest
obstacle to perfection. Yet the conflict cannot be more than apparent. Since the vocation to holiness is
there, so also must the grace to achieve it. If a man realizes that in every contact with souls he is acting in
union with Christ in himself and dealing with Christ in his neighbor, all his apostolic work is a continual
“sacrament” where he meets Our Lord, truly present and attainable. If he realizes that Our Lord sanctified
Himself for men, can he fail to see that he, too, must sanctify himself, not merely for God’s sake, but also
for the sake of the souls committed to his charge? This, I think, is where most priests tend to fail. They do
not realize that there is a connection between their own sanctification and the welfare of the souls for
whom they are responsible. If they could only realize this, it would mean an end to that impatient
fretfulness that finds it hard to devote time so precious in the ministry to the work of maintaining and
developing their own spiritual life.
This continual contact with Christ in oneself and in one s neighbor should be a source of great
sanctification for the priest. In some ways, it is more efficacious than the contact we make with Him
when we kneel before the Tabernacle. Every priest knows the awful sense of God’s remoteness and
impassibility that can strike us even when we hold the Host in our hands. We cannot “touch” Him. We
can do nothing for Him. In souls, on the contrary, He is more at our mercy. Anything we can do for them,
is done for and to Him. Such a view could be of great help to a priest in developing his spiritual life.
Despite its importance, we prefer not to try to develop this view here in any detail. For there is
an individual approach in such matters which depends greatly on personal tastes, and the right outlook
has to be discovered by each priest for himself. But the advantages of finding it are well worth the trouble
involved. Consider how such an “integral” view of Christianity can affect our life. Instead of
concentrating on our own “self,” even though it be for the purpose of denying our self, we do what is
infinitely better, for we concentrate on Christ, and thereby forget oneself and lose ourself in Him. We
shall also be continually reminded of our need of Him and our union with Him.
Few men of our time have understood this spirituality so well as Dom Columba Marmion. It
would be well worth while for every priest to read the life of that great Abbot, especially the chapters
where his own inner life is laid bare, generally in his own words. Time and time again, we find him
insisting that in all his works, he must imitate Our Lord who told us “My doctrine is not mine, but of Him
that sent me”; he feels urged to lay down his whole personality before God so that Our Lord would have
free disposal of all his actions, and would live and work in Him without hindrance. Like Our Lord, Dom
Columba wanted to have everything from the Father. One could find in those notes of Dom Marmion
which Dom Thibaut has summarized for us in his work Abbot Columba Marmion (Sands) the source of a
spirituality which is eminently suitable for every diocesan priest, and which, if adopted, would transform
a priest’s life in a very short time. Its adequate exposition must wait for a suitable opportunity, but we
would here insist that although Dom Marmion was a monk, his spiritual teaching is, as Benedict XV told
a Bishop, “the pure doctrine of the Church,” — and one very eminently adapted to the life and work of a
diocesan priest; there is no question of its being a spirituality reserved for the mystics or for the chosen
few for it is literally the birthright of every priest, being based on our supernatural adoption as sons of
God.
Unless a priest has grasped the tremendous truth of our supernatural adoption, unless he has
some understanding of our birthright as baptized souls, he will miss one of the fundamental facts of
Christianity, one which is of immense importance for his own life and work. As we have said, St.
Thomas sums it up when he tells us that in Baptism “the Passion and Death of Christ are communicated
as a remedy to the baptized person as if he himself had suffered and died,” (cf. 69, a 2). And the Mass we
offer, being as he says “the perfect sacrament of the Passion,” contains that Passion and Death really,
truly, and substantially, in a sacramental form. Therefore the whole of Christ’s merits are ours, by our
very baptism even, to offer to God every morning in more than ample atonement and impetration for the
sins and needs of the whole world. No wonder St. Paul urges us to glory in our infirmities, to go with
confidence to the throne of grace. There are no obstacles, except deliberate pride on our part, which
cannot be set aside through the efficacy of such a sacrifice.
In Christ as His members we, as well as our neighbor, are united to Him forming one mystical
person with Him who makes more than ample satisfaction and impetration for our sins and needs. In
Christ we, as well as our neighbor, are loved by the Father for the sake of His well beloved Son, to whom
we are united. In Christ we can act “as one having power” when dealing with souls. For the soul with
whom we deal is also a member of Christ and the whole power of God is at our disposal for his
sanctification if we but renounce ourselves and put on Christ.
For this is the whole point. St. Augustine said “there shall be one Christ loving Himself” We
love ourselves too much to let Christ love Himself in all our works. All that we do as priests, praying or
preaching, at the altar or in the parish, should merely be the occasion of Christ loving Himself. It will be,
if we forget ourselves, if we imitate Christ and live completely ad Patrem, entirely devoted to His
Father’s glory. For God made the world for His glory, and God acts on and in the world for His glory,
and He will not and cannot give that glory to another. If when we use His power fruitfully, we claim the
glory of it for ourselves, He must, by the very law of His nature, resist us. But if we are humble, if we
give Him the glory, He will give us grace. There is a marvelous depth in Our Lord’s warning that we can
only be His disciples if we deny our self and follow Him. Doing that we shall see the fulfillment of St.
Augustine’s words: “There shall be one Christ loving Himself,” since Christ it is Whom we must follow
and must find, and through Him and with Him and in Him, in the unity of the Spirit is all the glory of
God.